7 Things Charting Taught Me

7 Things Charting Taught Me is a great article focusing on the many benefits of NFP and charting.

Bring Sexy Back

I wanted to bring attention to Bring Sexy Back, the Facebook page from 1Flesh. I really like the combination of meme-style graphix and a strong Pro-Life message. I also like the fact that the 1Flesh people take the position of making sex both sexy and fun again.

One more Time

So, I am at it again. I will try to remain more focused and attentive this year. I have spent much of the last year moderating a Catholic-Protestant debate list on Yahoo! Groups, and really have not been focused on my blogging. I am trying to overcome my slothfulness this Lent and have decided to focus specifically on my efforts at evangelization and apologetics.

A nifty new site

Well, its not that new, but I did like it. The Zombie Parent's Guide (linked over to the right) is a Catholic father's discussion of Catholic stuff and zombie stuff.

Most of my more orthodox acquaintences are a bit squeamish about my love of most things zombie, but ultimately I think that these stories really do provide one of the few genres where moral thought is taken seriously in contemporary entertainment. Horror films in general often present a much more traditional (re: natural law) approach to understanding human behavior than dramas or comedies.

I will probably rant about this more later, but dinner is almost ready.

The Fine Line Between Abortionists and Serial Killers

Apparently, there IS a line that one can cross with regards to performing abortions--inducing labor and then murdering newborn infants is apparently beyond the pale for our society.

I find it very interesting that so many people are outraged by this doctor (who, if he had murdered the unborn within the wombs of their mothers, would not have been considered a murderer), but I also find the quiet surrounding the story a bit disconcerting.

It would be nice to see NARAL Pro-Choice America, or Planned Parenthood come right out and condemn this guy's actions. It would seem that he violated even their ethics and standards. It would be nice to see the voices of the pro-choice movement come forward and say that this behavior is not acceptable. Yet, they have been quite quiet, leaving one to assume that they are not nearly as troubled about this as most Americans are.

Interesting that NARAL took time out to accuse Sarah Palin of being 'out of touch with Americans’ values and priorities' the other day, yet cannot be bothered to even mention Kermit Gosnell on their site.

The Suffering Church

Aside from the ongoing persecutions in Vietnam and China, not to mention the terrorist attacks in Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, and the Philippines, there continues to be continuing persecution of the Catholic hierarchy in Kenya.

Anglicans are Coming Home to Rome--Anglicans Give Up Christian Identity

I was briefly in the Episcopal Church (the US franchise of the Anglican Church) on my way back to Holy Mother Church, so I have some sympathy for those who toughed out their sojourne longer than I did.  Now, I never really had anything invested in that organization (being Irish Catholic by identity, if not by practice), so I don't necessarily understand why people have chosen to cling to this particular sinking ship as long as they have, but I do understand the desire to avoid saying 'I was wrong.'

This was my largest difficulty with accepting God in my life, having to admit that I was, in fact, wrong.  I was wrong about many things and my entire world-view had to change.  I remember my wife and I dealing with the consequences of returning to the Church, particularly with regard to birth control (for the record, my wife was all for NFP... I was the one that was kind of freaked out about it).  I had been an atheist for quite a while and had become quite comfortable creating my own 'morality.'It really sucks being forced by circumstances to acknowledge that you are wrong.  That is a huge part of most conversion experiences, it was in my case.  For the Anglicans, they have to admit to themselves that not only were they wrong, but all their antecedents in the faith were wrong going all the way back to Henry.  For me, this would have made things easier, as I could simply blame the culture I was raised in; however, I can see that for some the idea of bringing into question their entire culture up the point of their conversion would be deeply unsettling. 

I pray that this process is made easier by Pope Benedict's attempts to develop a Catholic Anglican Rite.Anyway, the Anglican Church seems to want to make sure that those leaving feel good about their decision, as they have opted to rewrite their baptismal ceremony without reference to Christ. 

I think that this is a very good decision on the part of the Anglican Communion; if they eventually depart completely from their claims about being Christian, I suppose that they can no longer be accused of leading people into error.  It also will make their position eminently clear to those Anglicans and members of the Anglican Communion who are 'holding out' for some return to sanity in that church.  Considering the origins of the Anglican Church, I am not completely sure what sanity they would be returning to. 

Pray for our erring brothers and sisters!

WTC Greek Orthodox Church Rebuild Snubbed by NY Zoning

I have really tried to stay out of the whole Ground Zero mosque thing, because I honestly don't care.  America has much deeper problems than this mosque.  I do believe that this is a 'victory' mosque and I also understand that it is an intentional provocation, but I really don't feel provoked. 

What troubles me more than some imam building a mosque in NY is the Port Authority's zoning board's contemptuous hostility toward the rebuilding of an already extant Christian church in the area. 

St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church was crushed by one of the WTC towers when it collapsed.  For the past 9 years, the congregation of St. Nicholas has sought to have their church building rebuilt in the area, but have been repeatedly rebuffed by the Port Authority.

Again, the worst enemy of Christianity is not Islam, but rather secularism and the anti-Christian hostility that such secularism breeds.

The Problem with Assisted Suicide

Well, for those who believe that assisted suicide is the ultimate expression of individual choice and freedom, it is useful to look at the statistics coming out of the Netherlands where nearly 2% of all deaths are the result of doctor 'assisted' euthanasia.  This should be a fairly disturbing statistic to anyone who is concerned about life, especially considering the Dutch track record with regards to 'involuntary' euthanasia. 

The Remmelink Report provides the following statistics:

2,300 people died as the result of doctors killing them upon request (active, voluntary euthanasia).(7)

400 people died as a result of doctors providing them with the means to kill themselves (physician-assisted suicide).(8)


1,040 people (an average of 3 per day) died from involuntary euthanasia, meaning that doctors actively killed these patients without the patients' knowledge or consent.(9)


                          14% of these patients were fully competent. (10)


                           72% had never given any indication that they would want their lives terminated. (11)


                           In 8% of the cases, doctors performed involuntary euthanasia despite the fact that they believed alternative
                           options were still possible. (12)


In addition, 8,100 patients died as a result of doctors deliberately giving them overdoses of pain medication, not for the primary purpose of controlling pain, but to hasten the patient's death. (13) In 61% of these cases (4,941 patients), the intentional overdose was given without the patient's consent.(14)

According to the Remmelink Report, Dutch physicians deliberately and intentionally ended the lives of 11,840 people by lethal overdoses or injections--a figure which accounts for 9.1% of the annual overall death rate of 130,000 per year. The majority of all euthanasia deaths in Holland are involuntary deaths.
 The Remmelink Report figures cited here do not include thousands of other cases, also reported in the study, in which life-sustaining treatment was withheld or withdrawn without the patient's consent and with the intention of causing the patient's death. (15) Nor do the figures include cases of involuntary euthanasia performed on disabled newborns, children with life-threatening conditions, or psychiatric patients. (16)


The most frequently cited reasons given for ending the lives of patients without their knowledge or consent were: "low quality of life," "no prospect for improvement," and "the family couldn't take it anymore."(17)


In 45% of cases involving hospitalized patients who were involuntarily euthanized, the patients' families had no knowledge that their loved ones' lives were deliberately terminated by doctors. (18)


These statistics should be chilling, and they do not include the statistics for infanticide and other forms of non-end-of-life euthanasia.  The common justification for this behavior (aside from compassion) is the scarcity of medical resources.  This has to do with the Dutch definition of 'necessity', which allows for a doctor to involuntarily terminate a patient for the 'greater good'.

In 1991, the Dutch Supreme Court expanded the definition of 'necessity' to include non-somatic, mental health-related issues of pain:
the necessity defence is not limited to cases where the patient is in the terminal phase of an illness of somatic (physical) origin.


               The necessity defence can also apply where a patient's suffering is entirely of a non-somatic origin (ie is
                    mental suffering only, rather than suffering due to physical pain). A psychiatric patient's wish to die therefore
                    can be legally considered the result of a competent and voluntary judgement.(158)

                    Further, the suffering of a psychiatric patient can be legally considered 'lacking any prospect for
                    improvement' if the patient has refused a realistic therapeutic alternative.


                    The courts must approach cases where the necessity defence is said to be based on non-somatic suffering 'with
                    exceptional care'. Accordingly, the defence cannot be invoked in these cases unless the patient has been
                    examined by an independent colleague/medical expert.(159)
 
This creeping expansion of euthanasia should be read not as an aberration in an otherwise functional system, but should be understood as an endemic problem in the process of giving individual doctors (or even groups of doctors) the power of life and death.
 
Just something to think about.

The Distributist Review

I strongly suggest that all my readers check out the Distributist Review.  I will be contributing some articles on medieval economy at some point in the future, so check it out.  Great stuff on Catholic Social Teaching.

Anne Rice and the Catholic Church: The Problem of Liberal Catechesis

Anne Rice has left the Catholic Church for a second time; of course, this is not news... in fact, it is a couple of months old, but I wanted to bring it up because there has been a few high-profile defections in recent years that share a pattern that I find indicative of the failure of the Church to effectively catechize both cradle Catholics and converts.  Anne Rice was both a cradle Catholic AND a convert, so her defection is particularly useful for these purposes.

First, she left the Church and became an atheist when she was quite young.  This was an all too common phenomenon of her generation, so should really come as no surprise; however, her return to the Catholic Church was a clear sign that she recognized something was deeply wrong with her life... something was missing.  She is even able to identify things like the Eucharist as being very important, but not important enough to overcome her ideological convictions (or her personal life).  Ms. Rice returned to the Catholic Faith with some heavy baggage, baggage that would test a much stronger person than herself and was probably not assisted by her parish priest.

Ms. Rice's life, until her reconversion, was completely tied into the sexual revolution.  Her books celebrated hedonistic sexuality and homosexuality.  When her own son embraced a homosexual lifestyle, she was affirmed and celebrated this choice.  I was incredibly impressed that she was able to actually bring herself back into the Church, but I knew (from several interviews) that she had not really embraced many of the Church's teachings (particularly regarding issues of sexuality).

This is a problem, because the priest who received her back to the Church was clearly not focused on getting Ms. Rice to understand the nature of Catholic teaching on sexuality.  Ms. Rice was clearly accepted back into the Church without affirming her belief in the authority of the Church's teachings. 

With this in mind, we cannot be surprised or even particularly disappointed in her decision to leave the Church.  She never really entered into full communion with the Church the first place, so her decision to leave again is not really a full break with the Church per se. 

In order for Ms. Rice to have truly embraced the Church and truly entered into full communion with Christ's Mystical Body on Earth, she would have had to renounce many of her earlier decisions and to rescind her acceptance and celebration of her son's sexuality.  Admitting our own mistakes requires a nearly herculean act of will and is a major stumbling block for many who desire to return to the Church (it certainly was for me).  Not forcing Ms. Rice to confront her own errors did not prepare her to deal effectively with a life in the Faith.  Not forcing Ms. Rice to confront her own errors made her particularly vulnerable to the lures of the secular world and her own past.  This caused her life in the Church to be filled with contradiction and become even more difficult than it might have been.  Anne Rice was set up to fail by her pastor.

This is a common problem with liberal catechesis, as it does not effectively prepare the catechumen for the challenges of living the Faith in the world.  As a teacher of Catholic students, I see this problem constantly as students' beliefs are challenged and they simply do not have an effective enough grounding in the Faith to resist these challenges. 

We, as Catholics, cannot be surprised that so many young people (and others) leave the Faith when they simply do not understand that the Church is there to help them come to Truth; the Church incites change in people toward God.  The Church does not change to suit the needs of believers; the nature of being a believer is to believe, if one does not believe then one is not a believer... and the Church is a community of believers.

Wow, so I have been really lazy and bad.

Yep, it's me again.  Sorry to have been so ridiculously sporadic with my posting.  It has been a long summer-my main excuse is that I finally got my wisdom teeth removed and have been really unmotivated to do anything lately (ask my wife, I am sure that she is sick of it).

Anyway, I will pick up again now. 

Is Obama a Muslim?

Here's the thing... I think we would all be better off if Obama WERE a muslim!  While I am no fan of the Muhammedon religion, it's adherents are certainly more moral than the vapid cultural elites of this culture and Europe...

I will go off on this again later.