Moving Update and Some Quick Takes

ChelseaPro Life2 Comments

Moving update: today is the big day! I’m leaving shortly with my sister to drive down to Florida…for good this time! Movers came early yesterday to load up everything…and our stuff won’t get to the new place until next Monday – at the earliest! It’s going to be an interesting week, to say the least. Pray that we all make it through with our sanity in tact. Super excited about finally being a Floridian once again, but still a bit nervous about the transition…

Two Quick Takes:

Divided Motherhood in the Age of Discovery – Dr. Gerard Nadal has a brilliant article on how twentieth century technological developments came faster than humanity could process their implications and discern their right use — or whether they should be used at all. We have experienced this especially in the field of reproductive technology.

Why You Don’t Have to Use NFP – I really like Colleen’s article here. I am a huge proponent of natural family planning, myself, but I definitely do not think that it is necessary for everyone. There are many different reasons to use NFP, but by and large it is presented as merely an alternative to artificial contraception – keeping the focus on avoiding children and limiting family size. Colleen identifies the flaw in this approach perfectly:

“Instead of offering NFP as the main alternative to contraception, let’s offer CHILDREN as the alternative. The opposite of being “against conception” is being FOR conception. The Church teaches that having children is the ideal, and NFP is merely a tool we can use in our marriage if necessary…”

Of course we want to steer people away from using artificial contraception, but the focus should not merely be on offering natural methods of avoiding conception, but encouraging the great good of procreation which should only be avoided for serious reasons.

Now, time for me to get out of here. Sunshine State, here I come, baby!!!

Truth is Indestructible

ChelseaPro LifeLeave a Comment

Still packing here. The movers are coming on Tuesday to get everything out, so it’s crunch time! I’m excited about relocating, but feeling a little overwhelmed by how much there still is to do to get ready to go.

Since I have a moment to spare here, I just thought I’d share with you another little gem from Fr. Neuhaus’ book As I Lay Dying that I read recently.

And so it was that I thought of myself bidding this body farewell. But who or what is this that is left to say good-bye? Call it the soul. It has survived the catastrophe of death; it is indestructible. Through the centuries, many philosophers and theologians have offered “proofs” in support of the immortality of the soul. Some of these proofs are intended to establish the probability of the soul’s survival; others claim to be knock-down arguments that establish the matter beyond all reasonable doubt. Here is what I kept thinking about – sometimes in the muddle and sometimes with almost frightening lucidity – as I lay dying, and especially after that strange visitation. I kept thinking that there is a truth about things, a truth that I know, however inadequately, and the truth, if it really is the truth, cannot die.
…
Here is the crucial connection: The truth is indestructible and the soul is capable of apprehending the truth.

This book has been so much fun to read. The subject matter’s pretty heavy, but Fr. Neuhaus makes it all much less heady with the beautifully simple way delivers his thoughts.

Also, if you haven’t seen it yet, be sure to check out Marc Barns’ post from last Friday. I’ve written about suffering a lot on this blog over the past almost-six years, and he just put everything I’ve ever written to shame. Seriously. Where did this kid and his incredible mind come from?

Moving, Mercy, Killing and Chris Farley

ChelseaEuthanasia2 Comments

Dearest readers, I’m afraid my writing/blogging has taken a backseat lately to moving preparations (moving back to Florida next week!!!). Besides all the packing on top of trying to keep up with my other work, the past few weeks have been a marathon of lunches, dinners and drinks with good friends of mine here that I may never see again. Yesterday I had a three hour lunch with one of the hardest working retired priests I know. Please pray for vocations to the priesthood in our diocese. Although Fr. Clarence never complains, our retired priests should not have to be traveling as much and working as hard as he is.

Anyway, I may be slacking off on my writing lately, but several other good people have been doing their part to make the internet a better place with theirs.

One thing I’ve been meaning to share with you is the “Mercy and Killing” symposium that’s been going on over at Ignitum Today, a blog that I contribute to sometimes. The “and” in the title is meant to keep the subject broad – and it has been! Many have chosen to comment specifically on euthanasia and mercy killing and others have taken a completely different approach, talking about just mercy in general and even the death penalty. Click here to see all of the posts in the symposium. I’ve greatly enjoyed reading the articles in this series and I think it’s been an important discussion to have considering how many evil acts are committed today in the name of “mercy” and “compassion.”

farley.pngAlso over at IT, I really liked this guest post from 22 year old Marine Corps. Veteran Justin Marcel Condreay on Chris Farley and the demons that haunt all of us.

Demons are everywhere. We all have demons. Maybe they’re not as evident as in Mark, but we all have them—we just don’t call them demons.

“I’m afraid!” The demon Fear.
“I don’t feel good enough!” The demon Doubt.
“The things I would do to her…” The demon Lust.
“One more won’t hurt me.” The demon Gluttony.

Personally? Yes. I have my demons. I fight them every single day.

I walk through life with fear. ”Am I doing what God is calling me to do?”

I walk through life with doubt. ”There is no way a loving God would put me through this.”

I walk through life with anxiety, confusion, and sadness. ”What, God? What do you want from me? What’s it all mean, Lord?”

One man that fought to death – LITERALLY – with his demons was one Christopher Crosby Farley, better known as Chris Farley.

Chris Farley is known for his comedy. The fat Chippendale?! Matt Foley the “Motivational Speaker”?! Tommy Callahan in Tommy Boy?! The man was a genius, a legend.

From the outside, things looked great for Chris Farley. Money? Fame? Women? He had it all.

Inside? Inside, Chris was fighting a losing battle with his demons.

What most people don’t know about Chris Farley is that he was a devout Roman Catholic. Chris was a regular in the confessional. Even in the height of his drug addiction, he had a spiritual director he visited regularly. Chris volunteered at countless homeless shelters and nursing homes. He visited many children hospitals, making suffering kids smile.

My absolute favorite book is Chris Farley’s Biography, The Chris Farley Show: A Life in Three Acts. If you haven’t read it, you are missing out. This book makes everyone that reads it a better person.
Of course, I was amazed at Chris’s faith and charity work, but the thing that amazed me most about Chris Farley was his humility.

Chris Farley, huh? Who knew? Read the rest!

I regret that the move has been keeping me from regular blogging, but I hope that, once everything is settled, a change in scenery will be just what I need to help the creative juices start flowing a little bit easier. I’ve been trying to just work through it, but I’ve definitely been in a bit of a writing/blogging funk for what seems like a few years now. The motivation has just not been there. Your prayers – for safe travel and a smooth transition (especially for the animals that will be moving with me) – would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

TOB Tues: Should Women Wear Bikinis?

ChelseaModesty, Women5 Comments

modesty.pngThis is something I’m slowly coming around on. Not that I have ever strongly believed that women should wear bikinis or that it doesn’t matter if they do, it’s just not something I’ve really thought a whole lot about and developed a strong opinion on one way or another.

Bikinis are just the normal, socially acceptable kind of bathing attire that girls wear. Go into any popular women’s clothing store right now and you’ll see that’s what 99% of their stock of bathing suits for us consist of. I always wore bikinis in high school and I know several good Christian women who wear them today.

But, the arguments against them, when you finally sit down to think about it, really do just make sense. Specifically, that most women would never consider going out of the house in their underwear, so why do the rules change when it’s a “bathing suit” that is just as revealing, if not more so?

And then there’s this. Jason Evert explains the findings of a 2009 Princeton University study of the male brain when showed images of bikini-clad women:

When the young men viewed the scantily clad women, the part of their brain associated with tool use lit up. Even though some of the images were shown for as little as two-tenths of a second, the most easily remembered photographs were of bikini-clad women whose heads were cropped off the photos!

The purpose of the research, according to Susan Fiske, a professor of psychology at Princeton University, was to examine ways in which people view others as a means to an end. The findings of the research were presented during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Chicago.

Researchers also discovered that when some of the men viewed scantily clad females, the men’s medial pre-frontal cortex was deactivated. This is the region of the brain associated with analyzing a person’s thoughts, intentions, and feelings. Fiske remarked, “It is as if they are reacting to these women as if they are not fully human.” She added, “It is a preliminary study but it is consistent with the idea that they are responding to these photographs as if they were responding to objects rather than people.”

Read more.

Some will say this isn’t our problem. But we have a duty, not just to protect our own dignity, but also to at least try not make the already difficult task of chastity even more difficult for our brothers in Christ.

Turns out, I’m not the only one thinking about this at the moment. Last week, “Bright Maidens” blogger, Elizabeth Hillgrove, one of my fellow contributors over at Ignitum Today, had a two part “Bikini or Bikini-No?” discussion over at her blog Startling the Day. See: Part I and Part II.

Also related: over at Catholic Lane we published a piece on Four Reasons to Keep Bikini Pictures Off Facebook.

Ladies, what do you think about all of this? Do you wear bikinis? If not, do you go for regular one piece or something like this?

Human Beings are Never Vegetables. Ever.

ChelseaDisabled1 Comment

terriBy and large, we no longer refer to the profoundly disabled by the nasty term “human weeds” anymore, but that doesn’t mean we’ve stopped treating them as less than human. In fact, we’ve just come up with another, equally degrading and dehumanizing term to refer to them as. We call them “vegetables” and we use this term to justify denying them their basic human right to nutrition and hydration. But where did the term “vegetative state” come from?

Over at Catholic Lane, Dr. Dianne Irving explains:

The term “vegetative state” became popular at the “birth” of bioethics (1978 Belmont Report). It is traced to the “delayed personhood” arguments used at the beginning of life issues: first the vegetative soul is present, then later the sensitive soul is added, and finally (about 3-4 months) the rational soul is added. Then and only then is there a human being with a rational soul to be respected. St. Thomas (following Aristotle), as well as many religions today still follow that odd and scientifically/philosophically false dictum.

What bioethics did was also reverse this dictum to end of life issues — and this was taught in a major seminar at a Georgetown bioethics conference early on (about 1990). Those of us in the seminar on “euthanasia” were taught that — just as there is a series of souls at the beginning of life — at the end of life the reverse happens (supposedly adapted from St. Thomas): in the dying patient, first the rational soul leaves the body, then the sensitive soul leaves the body, and finally the only thing left there in the patient is the vegetative soul — and thus there is no “person” really present! Of course, that would also mean that with euthanasia, physician assisted suicide (PAS), and organ transplantation, the use of such “vegetables” in human research, etc., would be “ethical”. This concept of the “vegetative state” was immediately picked up by one of the first new bioethics international centers in France — INSERM. They were the ones who really popularized the phrase.

Of course, St. Thomas (and Aristotle) were systematically required as classical realist philosophers to start their philosophizing with empirical facts, and those that they “started” with in their “delayed hominization” arguments were empirically false; they both still believed that there were only 4 material elements in the natural world: air, earth, fire and water! Needless to say, whatever philosophical personhood concepts they arrived at from that false empirical starting place would be erroneous. But if you look at both St. Thomas’ and Aristotle’s systematic dogmas on the “soul”, both taught that there was only one soul with three powers — the rational soul — that includes virtually both the sensitive and the vegetative powers.

Read more.

Instead of being considered offensive and as unacceptable as calling black people the “N” word, today people are declared to be “vegetative” with all the authority and legitimacy of a medical diagnosis, but this is neither biologically or philosophically correct. Human beings do not become a different type of organism when their cognitive abilities are impaired. No disease or disability can take away our humanity and no amount of suffering can take away our dignity as human beings.

Cloning Humor

ChelseaBioethics, CloningLeave a Comment

Cloning hasn’t been in the news for quite some time, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not going on right now. Recall: we did not find out when the first embryos were cloned until after scientists wrote a report about their experimentation that had been going on for probably years. If nowhere else, we know it’s definitely going on in South Korea where Professor Park Se-pill at Jeju National University announced last year that he is striving to harvest embryonic stem cells from human clones by 2015.

cloningfunny.pngAs unfunny as the manipulation and destruction of human life for scientific research is, it’s good to keep a (tasteful) sense of humor about things, lest we die from the sheer injustice and inhumanity of it all. Last Sunday, the Miami Harold re-ran a classic Dave Barry column having a little fun with the concept of human cloning. I’ve posted this here before, but it’s even more relavent now that scientists have actually succeeded in cloning human embryos (along with human/rat, human/bovine, human/rabbit embryos and embryos with 3-parents):

Human cloning: Will it be a lifesaving scientific advance, like penicillin? Or will it prove to be a horrible mistake that unleashes untold devastation upon humanity, like the accordion?

As American citizens, we need to form strong opinions about this issue, so that we can write letters to our congresspersons, so that their staffs can, as a precautionary measure, burn them. But first we must inform ourselves by asking questions and then answering them in the ”Q” and ”A” format.
…
Q. Oh, OK. What is cloning?

A. In scientific terms, it is a procedure by which a theoretically infinite number of genetically identical organisms emerge, one at a time, from a Volkswagen Beetle.

Q. No, that’s ”clowning.”

A. Whoops! Our bad! Cloning is a procedure whereby scientists, using tweezers, manipulate DNA, which is a tiny genetic code that is found in all living things as well as crime scenes that have been visited by O.J. Simpson. A single strand of DNA can be used to create a whole new organism, as was proved when scientists at Stanford University took DNA from the fingernail of a deceased man and grew a six-foot-tall, 190-pound fingernail. Unfortunately, it escaped from the laboratory and held police at bay for hours by screeching itself against a blackboard. It was finally subdued by National Guard troops equipped with earplugs and a huge emery board.

Read the whole thing, have a good laugh and then pray for an end to this monstrosity before it becomes an even bigger nightmare.

Related humor: “Crazy Pete’s Embryonic Stem Cell Emporium!”

An IVF Change of Heart

ChelseaPro Life, Reproductive TechnologyLeave a Comment

ivf-hands2.jpgMeant to post this last week. A rare case of ‘good news’ regarding third party reproduction:

Dr Anthony J. Caruso is a Chicago doctor who worked in the field of in vitro fertilisation for 15 years before he quit in 2010. We interviewed him by email about the reasons for his change of heart.

MercatorNet: You ran a successful IVF practice in Chicago for ten years. Why did you leave?

Anthony Caruso: I was a member of several infertility practices since joining the field in 1995. In 2008 I was increasingly concerned about the kind of procedures we were doing. Initially it was the demands of same-sex couples. Then it was the way in which everybody looked at the embryos that had undergone pre-implantation genetic diagnosis.

Finally, it was the realization that the embryos that we were producing were just as important as the embryos that were transferred. I could not change my practice to accommodate the way I was looking at the process.
…
Is there one event that crystallized your decision to stop?

The reading of a 2008 document from the Vatican, Dignitas Personae, was the first blow. That instruction is written beautifully, and uses all of the current statistics in its analysis.

Read the rest. And, if you ever get time, read through some of Dignitas Personae, which is instruction from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on certain biological questions like genetics, cloning, embryonic stem cell research and assistive reproduction. If you ever want to know what the Church really has to say about these issues, that’s the place to find out.

We pro-lifers love it when abortion facility workers, like Abby Johnson, have a change of heart and we frequently pray for the conversion of abortionists. Let’s also pray for the conversion of those who manufacture and destroy life in IVF clinics and science labs all over the world.

In America: My Kind of ‘Pro-Life’ Movie

ChelseaPro Life1 Comment

I can’t remember the last time I was so impressed with/moved by a movie.
inamerica.png
In America, a movie about an Irish family adjusting to their move to New York City, has been on my list of movies to watch for nearly ten years now and I finally sat down to watch it last night. What a delight! This is my kind of ‘pro-life’ movie: subtle, well made and superbly acted with just the right blend of humor, drama and heart.

Although one of the main characters does risk her health in order to give birth to her unborn child, it’s not some in-your-face anti-abortion movie (not that that would be a bad thing). It’s just a movie about life and learning to welcome it and enjoy it, even in difficult circumstances. The whole thing reminded me of a quote I came across last year from Fedor Dostoyevsky:

“Brother, I’m not depressed and haven’t lost spirit. Life everywhere is life, life is in ourselves and not in the external. There will be people near me, and to be a human being among human beings, and remain one forever, no matter what misfortunes befall, not to become depressed, and not to falter – this is what life is, herein lies its task.”

Life is a gift, our task is to receive it, cherish it and live it – in good times and in bad.

If you’ve never seen this one before, check it out. You won’t be sorry.

TOB Tuesday: The Liturgical Dignity of Work

ChelseaTheology of the Body, TOB TuesdayLeave a Comment

joetheworker.pngMay 1 is the feast of St. Joseph the Worker. St. Joseph was regarded in the Bible as a good and just man and was referred to by his profession (“is this not the carpenter’s son?” Mt. 13:55). The emphasis on Joseph’s work in the Bible and throughout tradition speaks to the importance of our own professional work.

I love this passage from Supreme Knight Carl Anderson’s book Called to Love: Approaching John Paul II’s Theology of the Body on the body and work:

The body enables man to respond creatively to the world and to God – and to respond is to be responsible. There is no true freedom without responsibility.

We learn to appreciate the link between freedom and responsibility through work. We can even define work as man’s way of giving the material world a share in the dignity of the human body. To work is to give the world a human shape.

Nevertheless, because we work in our bodies, our labor isn’t purely external to us. Nor is its value simply the sum total of what we produce. The quality of work is not measured only by the quantity of the objects our work may produce. John Paul II, who put in countless hours of manual labor in a Polish factory, was very sensitive to the impact of work on the worker himself and on the development of his character – and impact the pope called the “subjective” dimension of work (Laborem Exercens, 6) Because man works in his body, whenever he transforms the world through work, he is also transforming and molding himself. How, since man’s life is a journey toward God, the work by which he shapes his life is a kind of “liturgy” (which comes from the Greek work leitourgia, meaning “work of the people”). To work is to shape the world into a reflection of our relationship with God; it is to incorporate the world into our worship. Every human action, every work man performs, no matter how humble, has a liturgical dignity. (p.36-37)

Recommended:
Sanctifying ordinary work

-Professional work – and the work of a housewife is one of the greatest of professions – is a witness to the worth of the human creature. It provides a chance to develop one’s own personality; it creates a bond of union with others; it constitutes a fund of resources; it is a way of helping in the improvement of the society we live in, and of promoting the progress of the whole human race…For a Christian, these grand views become even deeper and wider. For work, which Christ took up as something both redeemed and redeeming, becomes a means, a way of holiness, a specific task which sanctifies and can be sanctified (St. Josemaria, Forge 702).

-Before God, no occupation is in itself great or small. Everything gains the value of the Love with which it is done (St. Josemaria, Furrow 487).

St. Joseph the Worker, pray for us!

Music for Your Monday: Beatles Epicosity

ChelseaMusic, Pro Life, video4 Comments

Oh, internet, you’re such a wonderful thing sometimes. This mashup/medley makes my Beatles loving heart do a hap-hap-happy dance (watch the annotations to see which parts of each song are playing at the same time):

Also love this. I never thought that my favorite song of all time could be improved on, but in this video, George Martin and Dahni Harrison discovered a sweet little guitar solo for Here Comes the Sun that didn’t make it into the final cut of the song.