Designing Children, and Tossing Out the Bloopers

A very thoughtful take (the post is several years old,) on the subject of selective abortion to weed out the less desirable among us, the seconds, the damaged goods, the flawed, the less than perfect...

(There was a lovely line on a heart-breaking episode of Call the Midwife where a young man with cerebral palsy welcomed the parents of a severely disabled infant to the institution where he lives, and points out the bonus of being situated right next to a cookie factory - "We get the broken ones.")

The blogger describes himself as "neither inflexibly nor dogmatically  pro-choice nor entirely pro-life," but on one point he is unbending - eugenics aimed at the disabled unborn tells the living disabled nothing less than that they aren't really worthy of life.

I admit, in theory, (as opposed to practice where thank you, Lord, I have never had to make any decision of that kind,) I find anything other than fully pro-life or fully pro-choice intellectually inconsistent -- anything else is drawing a line at WHERE it is acceptable for a mother to allow her unborn child's murder.

Not to lose shot a college, yes, not to lose a shot at a promotion at work no?
Cerebral palsy, yes, brown hair no?
An IQ of 80 yes, 101 no?
May deepen mother's depression, no, may give mother heart attack yes?
Because you don't want a child of rape yes, don't want a girl, no?

The writer comes at this from an interesting perspective, because his son's disability is the result of an accident, but his empathy for the handicapped at all stages of their lives is noble.
And if this is as pro-life as he is now, it's a start, and a very good one.

I believe that it is appropriate that the disability community take a clear stand on preimplantation and prenatal screening and selective abortion based upon a genetic anomaly.  I believe that the indifference of the medical profession, genetic counselors and society allows parents to choose selective abortion as if it were the right thing for the child, the family, society and the human race.  Attempts to eradicate genetic based disability is unjust, not only for the child but for society and does nothing positive but denigrate the value of humans who happen to be disabled.  I have found little value in genetic testing, at this time, unless certain conditions, like congenital heart defects, etc. can be corrected in the developing fetus in utero. Indifference reduces the disabled child to an abstraction...nothingness.  The time to effect this exponentially exploding trend is NOW!  Silence is no longer an option.  My opinion only.....

Is there a cognitive dissonance...

...  when I find it appalling that a Catholic institutions of  learning, of ALL places, since they should be the very model of social justice, would try to deny their workers the right to organize to ensure themselves fair working conditions and compensation?

And equally appalling for the federal government to claim authority to determine whether such institutions are "religious enough" to escape its jurisdiction on such matters?

Mother's Day

As time goes on I seem to miss her more and more, rather than less.

I must seek elsewhere for sage advice.

(Yes, I'm being cheeky, but she would have laughed and laughed.) (And she was a natural platinum blonde too)

Cardinal Kasper to St John Fisher

"Sorry about that!"

I had trouble making 4th and 5th graders understand the gravity of what they do when they receive Communion, understand how truly awesome is the gift we are givne.
Unsurprising, with the casual way reception of the sacrament is modeled for them, at least for the most part.
I shall keep trying...

“Tell me, if anyone gave you gold-dust, would you not take hold of it with every possible care, ensuring that you did not mislay any of it or sustain any loss?”

 

(A thanks to Fr Z for this quote from St Cyril of Jerusalem)

Heritage Apples (oh, and Cary Grant)

Not a concept I'd ever encountered before, (though I have really enjoyed some marvelous, and marvelously ugly "heritage" tomatoes,) but I would certainly like to try and Aldenham Purple, or a Norfolk Rattlebox.
Here's how it works -- Time-suck that the internet is, someone wonders what the "coster" in "costermonger" might mean, etymologically it seems to have been derived from an archaic word for apple, (and is slang for "head", which makes sense when you think of other fruit-analogy insults like "melon-head,") we get sidetracked by Google Images of snappily dressed men, we learn that in French it refers informally to suits, or other outfits that cover the torso and ribs, oh yeah, (speaking of snappily dressed men,) paleontologist Cary Grant berating someone for wreaking havoc on his attempts to assemble a dinosaur skeleton, My intercostal clavicle! oh, some older strains of apples had ribs? ooh look, a whole website about apple varieties, and finally.....

Did YOU know there were red-fleshed apples?

Me neither!

"Sister's Mass"

Quite a dust-up over at Father Z's over a sister "starting Mass" without the priest.

In the actual quoted letter, the complainant doesn't say that the sister purported to have "started Mass" merely to have "started."
If the priest told her to "start Mass without him" he was certainly in the wrong; but perhaps he also did not phrase it that way, and knew that at most weekday Masses people are under serious time constraints, and figured that a Liturgy of the Word with distribution of Communion from the Tabernacle was better than nothing for those who had to get to work/drive children to school/break fast in order to take meds.... a million possibilities.
If indeed he would be there within a few minutes they should have waited, but since the complainant did not stay, we don't know if that is what happened.

It is important to be precise in our use of terms.
I've heard people say they went to "Mass at the Methodist church last week," or express preference for "Sister's Mass" in a parish that had to make do with Communion services, and I am almost always at pains to correct them.

But there are cases and there are cases.
I serve at a weekly service at a nursing home.
It is usually presided over by a deacon, maybe once every two months we will have a priest and there will be Mass Maybe once a month there is no ordained person available, and one of us lay people needs to conduct the.... is "para-liturgy" a correct term?

Anyway, people often thank the deacon for "Mass," I have been told several times that I "say the best Mass."
I do correct the other volunteers, gently I hope, especially the EMs who are, in some cases, extraordinarily ignorant. And sometimes I will explain even to an Alzheimer's wing resident that this isn't Mass.
But if a woman who sobs quietly for most of the day, and thinks I am her son half the time -- if for a half hour once a week she lights up like a Christmas tree with joy and remembrance, has all the words to the confiteor and wants to kneel to receive Communion from the first man she's seen in a cassock for probably 4 decades -- well, who am I to stop her from referring to him as "Father"?

More on Pope Paul's Beatification Rumor

The Italian news agency ANSA says the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints has recognized a supposed miracle attributed to the late Italian pontiff’s intercession. The miracle identified was the sudden healing of an unborn baby from an otherwise incurable illness.

Um.... why would a Catholic news organization use the phrase "supposed miracle"?

"Supposed", to me, anyway, has the implication of "dubious". Suspect. Questionable.

Wouldn't you have said "apparent"?

Do the Catholic Church and the UN REALLY Have the Same Goals?

Is Ban Ki-Moon correct? He say that "the United Nations and the Holy See have the same goals and the same ideas," when speaking of the Millennium Development Goals.

And certainly they share some, social justice is not just a goal, but a demand on the Christian.
And the 8 goals certainly start off right, I mean, who objects to education and clean drinking water? Who is in favor of infant mortality? Who likes malaria?

1. To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. To achieve universal primary education
3. To promote gender equality and empowering women
4. To reduce child mortality rates
5. To improve maternal health
6. To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
7. To ensure environmental sustainability
8. To develop a global partnership for development

(What exactly does "developing a global partnership for development" really mean? That we'll all work together? Kind of a meaningless goal. But I digress.)

The idea of gender equality, (especially now that we know that some people may think there are at least 31 flavors of gender beyond what us plain ol' cissexuls enjoy.:oP) and empowering women is troubling, however.*
Plenty of people, including many of those formulating position papers for various UN sub-organizations would say such empowerment necessarily includes access to programs for "sexual health" or "reproductive rights" which are barely coded phrases for birth control or abortion.
("Reproductive rights" refers to something other than the right to abort the unborn in 2014 with about the same frequency as "States' rights" referred to something other than the right to traffic in human beings in 1860.)

And a "right" to homosexual "marriage" is too broadly held a principle of many "first world" members of the UN, to conclude that the Church and the UN, (despite the latter's refusal so far to adopt the Yogyakarta Principles,) are truly in agreement there, especially in light of the UN panel that head the temerity to issue a report demanding doctrinal changes of the Church.
You there, stop teaching that a sin is sinful!

*Mary Ann Glendon's statement on the Beijing Platform for Action, and the notion "that sexual identity can be adapted indefinitely to suit new and different purposes," is instructive.

Appropriate Miracle Aids Paul VI's Cause for Sainthood

We all know the Lord has a sense of humor, and maybe a sense of drama? - this bit of news is so apt it is almost funny. But wonderful!
The author of the prophetic Humanae Vitae will be beatified following the miraculous cure of an unborn child.

"Conscious Uncoupling"

I read an interview with the woman who gives seminars, or wrote a book, or something with that title, moaning that a celebrity hadn't given her credit for the phrase when said celebrity announced her coming divorce. And yet a little ways down in the whining she let slip that she hadn't come up with it anyway, a friend had. Did she share proceeds or royalties with him, one wonders?

Anyway, anyone with a lick of sense would have to agree that consciously is the right way to divorce, it's not the kind of thing you ought to do while asleep.
Or in a drunken stupor.
Or after sustaining a cranial injury while trying to achieve Youtube immortality by riding something and jumping off something into something whilst simultaneously somethinging a something and wearing a something.
You know....

Anyway, wide awake and fully sentient, Gene Robinson is getting another "divorce".

As someone who has benefited greatly from the annulment process in the Catholic Church, I understand that what seems like an actual marriage might not be.

And forget not believing matrimony is sacramental,  if you don't take the process seriously your odds of having a successful marriage, or even a successful "marriage" must go down exponentially.

But I can't help but think the no longer happy couple of husband and husband would have benefited from pre-Cana.

Does the Episcopal Church have anything like that?

And I REALLY think they could have benefited from....well, from what the Catholic Church teaches. Quoted in the post article from a piece Mr.  Robinson wrote about an evangelical pastor and his approach to sin:

While Jesus never says a word about homosexuality, Jesus is quite clear and specific that remarriage after divorce is adultery. Following [the pastor's] advice to homosexuals, these remarried and ‘practicing’ adulterers should repent of their sin and seek to amend their sinful lifestyles – by divorcing their second spouses (ending their sinful ways) and thereafter living a celibate and chaste sexual life, according to the precepts of Scripture.

Ummm.... yeah. And in fact, Mr Robinson, the Church teaches that.
Yes, THE Church.
Which, Facebook posts purporting to have the goods on papal phonecalls to the contrary, She does still teach.
Logical consistency.... it's a good thing.

Let me get this straight, banking industry...

YOU played fast and loose with all these processes and the regulations concerning them for years leading to a near collapse of the economy, but  I ask for a fully collateralized loan in which YOU are the institution that holds the collateral funds, and three months into the process you suddenly not only want me to account for a check identical in source and size to a check automatically deposited into the same account (ALSO with your institution,) every month on the same day of the month for the last 32 months --  

you want a signed letter explaining a Christmas 
Gift Check for One Hundred Dollars?

Do you wear a mantilla?

Or, "man-TILL-ah" as it was pronounced by some reporter at St Peter's Square a week ago.

Funny story story from Fr Ray Blake's blog.

Some, not many of the women in our congregation wear mantillas and very elegant they look too.
Well to cut a long story short, Annie who is 5 often stays with a friend of her mum's who had some rather elegant Victorian lace curtains. Annie found some scissors, now Annie has a mantilla and so do her three of her dolls and her favourite pink dinosaur, and whilst mum's friend still has lace curtains but one is now quite considerably shorter than its pair, they are less elegant nowadays.
And Annie was bareheaded at Mass on Sunday and so was the pink dinosaur.

Our Lady of Those Who, Even Though Might Not Attend Mass Regularly, At Least, You Know, Have Good Hearts And Try To Be Good Because God Is In Your Heart, Anyway, So Don’t Judge Me, Because God Said Not To Judge

Reading about Our Lady of Good Intentions at Eye of the Tiber is just what you need, sometimes.....;oD
And if you've read all of that and still feel in need of a laugh, google Convos With Coco, you will not be dissappointed. "Leaves" is my favorite, but "I Want a Cookie" is pretty good too.

The Supremes narrowly declared sectarian prayer at public governmental meetings to be constitutional.

Well....

The Beauty of a "Silent" Mass

The great Colin Mawby's newsletter, Vivace, contains this, this morning:

In the Catholic Church there is an assumption that there should always be music at Mass. This is based upon the liturgical teaching of Vatican 2 and is a reaction against the silent Latin Low Mass of pre-Conciliar days.

Many people need music at Mass; they enjoy singing hymns and listening to the choir: they are uplifted by the sound of sacred music and find it essential to worship. However, some react differently and find music very distracting. I am convinced that these people should be equally  catered for and that regular silent celebrations should be available wherever possible.

I have the happiest memories of the old silent Latin Low Mass: I was educated to love it and feel that a lot has been lost through noisy congregational participation, both spoken and sung. Silent, internal participation should be an essential part of worship. Noisy declamation can be very offputting for some people.

I suggest that the occasional Mass without music and the barest minimum of external participation should be an essential part of the Parish Worship programme. Many worshippers would welcome this and find such Masses extremely spiritual and helpful.

I will say,when I first encountered one, musicless Masses seemed nothing but a flight from bad music. But having experienced one in the EF my attitude changed utterly, and they offer their own, positive riches.

Libel and the Seal of the Confessional

I have been wondering about this the past week or so.

My First Reconciliation, my First Communion are far in the past.
But in those days, ( imagine Grandpa Simpson's voice,) the example given when children wondered, as we inevitably did, about just how tight a seal that seal of the confessional was, we were taught, what I have since learned was basically the plot of an old movie with Montgomery Clift, don't worry, the priest can't tell anyone about it, even if he has to DIE to preserve the sancity of the confessional!

But we never thought of the confessor possibly risking something of far greater value than his life, that is - the souls of the Faithful.
Suppose a priest, or even, say a bishop, oh, what the heck, let's say a pope - suppose a pope has a confidential conversation, one that is not just pastoral, but sacramental, about the irregular situation a married woman is in, (this is all hypothetical, look you,) and he tells her something.

Now, a penitent is not bound by the seal, and let's say she tells someone who broadcasts what she has PURPORTEDLY told him on Facebook.
And his version of what was said by the confessor is a challenge to the Faith, contradicts both (immutable) doctrine and (authoritatively promulgated,) discipline; an a challenge to the Faithful, who are misled, scandalized, whatever...

Is there any way he can address this, tell the truth of what he said?

I don't think so...

Barbarian Nation...

Such brutality, state sanctioned torture-execution:

BEIRUT: The jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant announced it had executed seven prisoners in its bastion in northeastern Syria on Tuesday, two of them by crucifixion.
ISIL, which has been disavowed even by Al-Qaeda, said it held the seven responsible for a grenade attack on one of its fighters earlier this month in the Euphrates Valley city of Raqa, which it rules with an iron fist.
"Ten days ago, attackers on a motorbike threw a grenade at an ISIL fighter at the Naim roundabout. A Muslim civilian had his leg blown off and a child was killed," the group said on Twitter.
"Our fighters immediately set up a roadblock and succeeded in capturing them. They were then able to detain other members of the cell."
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights posted a photograph of the two prisoners being crucified at the roundabout with passer-by walking past apparently unfazed.
One of them, blindfolded and with his head spattered with blood, had a banner wrapped round his body proclaiming: "This man fought against Muslims and threw a grenade in this place."
The monitoring group said they were not the first crucifixions by ISIL. On April 16, its fighters executed a man for theft from a Muslim in the same way

Oh, wait, not that one, this:

An Oklahoma inmate whose execution was halted Tuesday because the delivery of a new drug combination was botched died of a heart attack, the state Department of Corrections said. Director Robert Patton said inmate Clayton Lockett died Tuesday after all three drugs were administered. Patton halted Lockett’s execution about 20 minutes after the first drug was administered. He said there was a vein failure.
Lockett was writhing on the gurney and shaking uncontrollably.
The planned execution later Tuesday of a second inmate was postponed.
The executions of Lockett and Charles Warner previously had been delayed after they challenged the secrecy behind the state’s lethal injection protocol. Lockett received a new lethal injection formula that included the sedative midazolam as the first in a three-drug combination.
A four-time felon, Lockett, 38, was convicted of shooting 19-year-old Stephanie Neiman with a sawed-off shotgun and watching as two accomplices buried her alive in rural Kay County in 1999 after Neiman and a friend arrived at a home the men were robbing.

O glorious St. Dismas, you who among all the Saints, were the only one directly canonized by Christ Himself. You who were assured that on hat "very day" you would be granted a place in Heaven near to Him, because of the sincere confession of your sins in the Tribunal of Calvary and because and because of your true sorrow for them in open confession as you hung on the cross. You who with absolute love and repentance did move the Heart of Jesus to mercy and forgiveness, even in the fearful presence of the centurion. You whose face was that closest to Jesus in His Agony, to offer Him a word of consolation, even closer than His most beloved Mother, Mary. You who knew well how to pray. Teach me the words which I ought to say to Him in order to gain pardon and the grace of perseverance. You who are so close to Him in Heaven, as close as you were to Him during His last moments on earth, pray to Him so that I may never abandon Him again, and that at the end of my life I may also hear the words which He addressed to you: "This day you shall be with Me in Paradise," Amen.

There is nothing sweeter on the tongue than a banana one has picked from ones own tree.

Perfect slacker food....

A Slacker's Devotion to St Joseph the Worker

It seems hinkey, but I do have such a devotion.