Elegant, Modest, Lovely – THAT DRESS!!

ChelseaPro Life2 Comments

I didn’t watch a second of the royal wedding or any of the coverage on TV, but I did check out some photos online this morning and I am absolutely loving the elegant, modest and just lovely wedding dress that Kate wore (click image to enlarge)! And check out her sister and maid of honor, Phillipa (see front shot here). Randy Fenoli, Fashion Director for Say Yes to the Dress said, “She absolutely nailed it” and, the only man who’s opinion really matters, told his stunning bride, “You look beautiful.” American girls, take note, you and your bridesmaids can still be beautiful while keeping yourselves covered!

royal-wedding.png

I second the prayer that modest fashion blogger Rebecca Christian said on twitter: Oh please Jesus, let Kate bring sleeves back.

Do be sure to read the sermon from the Anglican Bishop of London, which Katherine Jean Lopez called “an ode to Christian marriage and family life.” And, for all the pomp and circumstance, KJL noted of the Christian wedding in general: “it’s all complicated&imperfect, as we are,but it’s a gift2have so many–& media–eyes internationally fixed on things eternal.” Well, lets pray that Wills and Kate – who were “shaking up” before getting married – payed attention, at least.

Speaking of things eternal – don’t forget, the beatification of JP II is this Sunday! See first images of his tomb being moved from the grottoes.

Your Handicapped Child is a Blessing

ChelseaDisabled, Embryo Screening, Suffering, video1 Comment

I wish more families who have children diagnosed with Down syndrome and other diseases before birth would get advice like this instead of pressure to abort:

In a related video, St. Josemaria talks about true “liberation” from suffering and the value of the prayers of sick people – the apostolate of suffering. On our retreat last week, the priest said that St. Josemaria would often solicit the prayers of the sick when he was just starting Opus Dei and credits those prayers for helping the work spread so far and wide!

Liberation: Blessed be pain! Loved be pain! Sanctified be pain! Glorified be pain! We can say this, of course, because of the Resurrection and the Triumph of the Cross. In the cross we are victorious, through the cross we shall reign, by the cross all evil is destroyed, Alleluia! Hope you’re all having a great Easter season!

Related: Mother Teresa on Suffering

An Easter Giveaway!!

ChelseaPro LifeLeave a Comment

johnson.jpgI’ve been waiting to do this for weeks!! When Abby Johnson was here in Mid-Missouri earlier this month, I got an autographed copy of her powerful pro-life conversion testimony Unplanned to give away to one lucky Reflections of a Paralytic (ROAP) reader!!

I’m sure many of you are familiar with Abby’s story – how she used to be the director of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Texas and had a change of heart after witnessing a 13 week old fetus fight for its life during an ultrasound-guided abortion in 2009. Now, just a few years later, she’s one of the most well known pro-life advocates. She has exposed Planned Parenthood with numerous appearances on FoxNews and travels the country sharing her story and training pro-lifers to be effective sidewalk counselors (click here to see video of the “role-playing” part of Abby’s sidewalk counselor training here in MO)!

Ok – now, for the rules of the giveaway. It’s really very simple – just “like” the ROAP Facebook page and you’re entered (those who already like it are automatically entered)!! Then, on Sunday I will use a random number generator to pick one lucky winner and post it on here and Facebook. That person will have 24 hrs. to email me their address, so that I can get the book in the mail to them ASAP!! If you do not have a Facebook account and would like to be entered, please leave a comment below – with your real email address – and I will add your name to the list. Sound good? Good. Be sure to also “like” this post (see below) and pass this on to all your Facebook family and friends!

About Unplanned
Read the first chapter

Previous posts:
Abortion Clinic Worker Sees the Light
Abby Johnson on Use of Graphic Abortion Images During Clinic Prayer Vigils

TOB Tuesday: Purity and the Resurrection

ChelseaTheology of the Body, TOB TuesdayLeave a Comment

resurrection.pngA friend of mine had this up on facebook recently and I can’t think of a better TOB kind of thought for this Tuesday in the octave of Easter:

“I am always astonished at the emphasis the Church puts on the body. It is not the soul she says that will rise but the body, glorified. I have always thought that purity was the most mysterious of the virtues, but it occurs to me that it would never have entered the human consciousness to conceive of purity if we were not to look forward to a resurrection of the body, which will be flesh and spirit united in peace the way they were in Christ. The resurrection of Christ seems the high point in the law of nature.”
From “Flannery O’Connor Spiritual Writings”

Rejoice…

ChelseaPro LifeLeave a Comment

He is Risen!

    He is Risen

“Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:54-55)

Let us never be discouraged fighting for truth and life in our deadly culture for we know that ultimately death has already been defeated and He Who is Truth and Life reigns supreme!! Yes there will still be suffering and death in this world. But the Victory of the Cross and Resurrection means that death no longer has the last word. Amen. Alleluia!

image: “He is Risen” by Greg Olsen

We Adore You, O Christ, and We Praise You

ChelseaPro Life1 Comment

Because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

    Crucifixion

“From the foundation of the world, everything had been pointing to what happened on the Cross.” –Fr. Richard Neuhaus

A note from my retreat this week: may we always carry within us the dying of Christ so that we can share in His redemption. Father said that just as it is a false religion to only stress pain and suffering, it is likewise false to only preach victory and joy. They are intermingled – the paschal mystery. One can’t be Christian unless you combine both the cross and the victory.

Had there been no cross, Christ could not have been crucified. Had there been no cross, life itself could not have been nailed to the tree. And if life had not been nailed to it, there would be no streams of immortality pouring from Christ’s side, blood and water for the world’s cleansing. The legal bond of our sin would not be cancelled, we should not have attained our freedom, we should not have enjoyed the fruit of the tree of life and the gates of paradise would not stand open. Had there been no cross, death would not have been trodden underfoot, nor hell despoiled.

Therefore, the cross is something wonderfully great and honourable. It is great because through the cross the many noble acts of Christ found their consummation – very many indeed, for both his miracles and his sufferings were fully rewarded with victory. The cross is honourable because it is both the sign of God’s suffering and the trophy of his victory. It stands for his suffering because on it he freely suffered unto death. But it is also his trophy because it was the means by which the devil was wounded and death conquered; the barred gates of hell were smashed, and the cross became the one common salvation of the whole world. -St Andrew of Crete

Ave verum Corpus natum
de Maria Virgine:
Vere passum, immolatum
in Cruce pro homine.

Cuius latus perforatum
fluxit aqua et sanguine:
Esto nobis praegustatum
mortis in examine.

O Iesu dulcis!
O Iesu pie!
O Iesu fili Mariae.

English:
Hail, true body,
born of the Virgin Mary:
Truly suffered,
died on the cross for mankind:

From who pierced side
flowed water and blood!
Be for us a foretaste
of death in the last hour!

O gentle Jesus!
O holy Jesus!
O Jesus, Son of Mary!

Prenatal Genetic Testing is Not the Problem, Abortion Is

ChelseaAbortion, Embryo ScreeningLeave a Comment

Rebecca Taylor is a voice of sanity on the whole issue of genetic testing (she is responding to this LifeNews piece from genetic-testing.pngKristen Hawkins):

I have the utmost respect for Ms. Hawkins and I feel her anger and frustration. Having tested pregnant mothers and their partners for cystic fibrosis mutations, I am fully aware of how this information is being used. But I disagree that it is the “genetic testing [that] is killing little girls and boys like Gunner.” Genetic testing may be cited as the reason to kill a baby with a genetic disease, but the REAL killer is abortion on demand. Without legalized abortion, prenatal testing would be what it should be, a way to find out more about the life going in the womb, especially if something is going wrong. Without legalized abortion, the use of prenatal testing would be naturally limited to conditions that could benefit from some kind of prenatal intervention.

In fact the Catholic Church has no problem with prenatal testing, unless it is done with the intent to abort if the results are not what the parents want. Prenatal testing is only immoral when the parents are already planning to abort when the testing is acquired. I have a suspicion that this scenario happens less often than we think. After reading many heartbreaking accounts of women who have been pressured and harassed by medical professionals to abort their “genetically-defective” children, I suspect that most women go into prenatal testing because their doctor recommends it and then are bullied into abortion when the test results aren’t perfect.

The problem is abortion and a medical establishment that uses it as a “solution” to medical problems. Always has been. Abortion takes clinically useful information and makes it deadly.

Do read the rest.

That good science can be used to very bad things, doesn’t make the science itself bad. After all, we don’t condemn the testing of people for cancer or other debilitating diseases after birth even though assisted suicide and euthanasia are becoming increasingly more common these days. I certainly understand the misgivings that people have regarding prenatal genetic testing given the numbers of children who are killed in utero after negative test results, but, let’s be clear here, the real problem is abortion and the culture of death, not the testing itself.

Cohabitation Vows

ChelseavideoLeave a Comment

Absolutely brilliant!

Related – Poll finds more women cohabitate for love, men for sex. Duh.

Sociological Reasons Not to Live Together

On Retreat!!

ChelseaPersonal2 Comments

Dear readers, Holy Week is here – Stay by the Cross!

I’m off on my much needed annual retreat! I’m so ready for this. I’ve been in such a funk lately! Please keep me in your prayers the next couple of days, as you will be in mine!

“Big IVF”

ChelseaIVF, Reproductive Technology1 Comment

Wesley Smith nails it:

Big IVF–for that is what it has become, a rich and politically powerful industry–objectifies human beings and distorts familial and other relationships in the name of making babies. It objectifies women as egg farms and womb leasing merchants. It objectifies embryos as a culling often happens sorting out the fit from the unfit (however that might be defined in the circumstances) and putting hundreds of thousands into the deep freeze where they are now looked upon as mere natural resources, ripe for the harvest. Coming soon, perhaps, generic engineering and capacities or aesthetic enhancements to ensure that the baby that is born is the baby that the parents want.

It objectifies fetuses, as some are “selectively reduced,” that is aborted, as being in excess of need or health. It objectifies surrogates who might be paid by rich foreigners–even in America–to produce babies for them, never to see the child they nurtured again. These women have even had the name used to describe their role objectified, from “birth mother” to “gestational carrier.” It can objectify babies and children as familial relationships can get very confused and real fathers and mothers may be lost in confidentiality. It has led to a sense of entitlement to be a parent, no matter the circumstances, opening the door women the age of grandmothers giving birth and a milieu of anything chaos, as in Octomom. In other words, in addition to joy, which it has brought to many loving people, IVF has also caused tremendous pain and profound familial disruption.

Do read the rest.

Unlike “big oil”, “big ag” and the other so-called “big” “evils” of the world today, “big IVF” really is inherently evil. Not many are willing to admit it because of the perceived good it does helping infertile couples to have children. After all, how can it be wrong to try to bring life into the world?? But, IVF has turns the creation of a new human being into something that more resembles a science experiment than the act of love that it is meant to be and thus is contrary to the dignity of the child, the dignity of the spouses and their relationship, and Man’s status as a creature.

See also
IVF: the younger sister of eugenics and the mother of human ESCR/cloning