TOB Tues.: The Register’s TOB Symposium

ChelseaTheology of the Body, TOB TuesdayLeave a Comment

TOBThe National Catholic Register is in the midst of examining the rich catechesis of JP II’s Theology of the Body through a series of articles.

It started with an introductory article from Cardinal Justin Rigali:

The theology of the body is not over our heads. It is deep in our hearts.

Teachers do not take shortcuts. In fact, every great teacher patiently leads the student from the known to the unknown. Pope John Paul II began with the known, that is, the familiar teaching of Jesus as recounted in the 19th chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew. The Pharisees want to take a shortcut around Jesus. But there is no shortcut around Jesus, who is the beginning, the center and the goal of history. Nonetheless, the Pharisees pressure him with the question, “May a man divorce his wife for any reason whatever?” Jesus responds that there are no shortcuts when it comes to the meaning of marriage. In fact, Jesus insistently teaches that to understand the truth about marriage we must go back “to the beginning”; we must go back to the moment of creation. Jesus refuses the shortcut and firmly responds: “Have you not read that from the beginning ‘the Creator made them male and female’ (Genesis 1:26-27). … ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and unite with his wife, and the two will be one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24)?”

Pope John Paul II proceeded step-by-step. He dedicated careful, thorough and extensive consideration to the words of Jesus in the Gospel of St. Matthew, the Book of Genesis and the teaching of St. Paul.

Read more – especially if you want a good overview of the TOB.

Then Colin Donovan discussed how the TOB fits with Church tradition:

Theology is “faith seeking understanding” (St. Anselm), so while the faith does not change, the Church’s understanding of it deepens.

At first glance, the theology of the body seems entirely new. Instead of studying the objective natures of things, as Catholic philosophers have traditionally done, it reflects on human experience, in order to discover the essential elements of experience as they appear in the consciousness of the human person.

Since it concerns human “experience,” and not human nature, its critics often view it as a purely subjective method, incapable of producing universally valid results.

As it turns out, the philosopher Karol Wojtyla (later Pope John Paul II) agrees with some of this criticism.

Read more

Future articles will be coming daily it looks like so stay tuned to NCR (I will try point them out here as I see them as well)!

Immigrant Family Forced to Watch Mother Dehydrated to Death

ChelseaPro Life15 Comments



While a family is fighting for the right to care for their sick child In Canada, here in America a family has been removed from making medical decisions for their mother. After a stroke left her severely brain damaged, Rachel Nyirahabiyambere, a legal immigrant from Rwanda, has been given a court-appointed guardian who has ordered her feeding tube removed against her family’s wishes. From the story (h/t Wesley Smith):

On Feb. 19, Ms. Nyirahabiyambere’s feeding tube was removed on the order of her court-appointed guardian. Her six adult children — including two United States citizens — vehemently opposed that decision. But they were helpless to block it when Georgetown University Medical Center, frustrated in its efforts to discharge Ms. Nyirahabiyambere after she had spent eight costly months there without insurance, sought a guardian to make decisions that the family would not make.

“Now we are powerless spectators, just watching our mother die,” said Mr. Ndayishimiye, 33, who teaches health information management at the State University of New York’s Institute of Technology in Utica. “In our culture, we would never sentence a person to die from hunger.”

In emails to their mother’s guardian, Nyirahbiyambere’s sons say that they are fine with “do not hospitalize”/”do not resuscitate” orders, but insist that their mother would not want her feeding tube removed. Said one son:

“Ending someone’s life by hunger is morally wrong and unrecognized in the culture of the people of Rwanda”

to which Mrs. Sloan had the audacity to respond:

“You have asked for understanding about your culture and that is exactly what I am trying to do. Feeding tubes are not part of your culture, are they?”

So, the United States should treat every immigrant the same way he or she would be treated in their native country? That’s the standard for healthcare in America? Unbelievable. And this woman calls herself a nurse??

According to the article, Sloan insists that the issue with the feeding tube essentially has nothing to do with insurance and money, but later admits that her client’s life is ultimately just not worth the cost of keeping her alive:

“Hospitals cannot afford to allow families the time to work through their grieving process by allowing the relatives to remain hospitalized until the family reaches the acceptance stage, if that ever happens…Generically speaking, what gives any one family or person the right to control so many scarce health care resources in a situation where the prognosis is poor, and to the detriment of others who may actually benefit from them?”

Does anyone else find it tragically ironic that, after escaping genocide and hunger in her native land, this woman is now being starved to death in the country she fled to for freedom? As of late Thursday afternoon last week, Ms. Nyirahabiyambere was still alive – almost two weeks after the feeding tube was removed.

Oh, and, by the way, this is being done at a self-described Catholic hospital.

Again – Awful. Awful. Awful.

Related:
Food and Water are Universal Human Rights
JP II, the Church on Withdrawing Nutrition and Hydration

Teacher With Down Syndrome Breaks Stereotypes

ChelseaAbortion, Disabled, Eugenics, video2 Comments

Hat tip to reader Renee for emailing me this delightful story. As uplifting as it is, however, it is also a little infuriating to see this beautiful woman enriching the lives of so many young people and knowing that upwards of 90% of children prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome are never allowed make it out of the womb. It’s a pretty safe bet that none of the kids in her class look at her and think she should have never been born.

Momma Says: Life is Like a Crazy Banana

ChelseaFamilyLeave a Comment

As if reading my mind while I was writing this post on Wed., one of my very favorite bloggers, CMR‘s Matt Archibold, wrote this lovely post for the Register about a day in the life of a father of five (considered a “large” family by today’s standards):
bananas.jpg

My wife is the Charlie Brown of banana pickers. She always picks the sorriest looking bananas. I don’t know if she feels sorry for them or there’s something she just doesn’t understand about bananas but she always picks the craziest looking bananas.

I offered my five year old son a banana this morning when he came downstairs to get ready for school. It was the last one. And there was a reason it was the last one. It looked like every other banana’s great grandfather. I’d tried giving it to the three year old a few minutes earlier and she backed away all wide eyed with her hands up to fend me off like I was brandishing a weapon. I didn’t want the banana to go to waste so when my five year old came down the stairs I practically jumped on him.

“Here’s your banana” I told him as he was approaching the pop tarts.

“No way,” he said, as if he’d prepared for me.

I insisted it was fine but he said it looked “crazy.”

It’s not “crazy” I assured him and unpeeled it, showing a perfectly fine banana. He took an intrigued step forward and then looked at me to make sure that I wasn’t playing a trick on him.

“OK,” he reluctantly said and took the banana.

Read on as he illustrates how, like some bananas, family life often looks a little crazy (even rotten) on the outside, but inside it’s still ripe and sweet.

What’s So Great About Large Families?

ChelseaFamily4 Comments

We all know what society thinks about large families, but what do those who actually come from a large family think? I recently started reading a book about the life of Montserrat Grases, a candidate for beatification, who was one of nine children growing up in Spain in the 50s and 60s. I’m sure results may vary, but in the book, her brother, Enrique describes his experience growing up in such a large family:
montserrat.png
In spite of the economic problems I have very happy memories of those years,” Enrique, the eldest, says. “We were a big, happy, fun-loving but well-ordered family. Our parents insisted on practicing the virtue of orderliness, in regard to the use of our own things and taking care of our books. The fact that money was scarce helped to make us more responsible. So our parents did not have to be constantly nagging us – ‘What is that ball doing in the hall or why are your socks thrown around the room?’

The virtue of order meant that though there were many of us and there was very little money, we were able to cope.

Now, with hindsight, I appreciate having been born into a big family, as a pleasant, enriching experience. You get used to sharing everything. You don’t have ‘your’ room, it is always ‘our’ room. Especially for us eldest ones, Montse and I, who were entrusted with the care of the little ones. The situation made us more mature and taught us to be responsible for other people all the time.

However, big families do have a problem. Being so many it is easier to become independent. Knowing this our parents taught us to be united above all, to perceive the family as a communal enterprise. Each one of us had to contribute his share to support the family, so, when problems did arise, they were divided by eight and we were never overwhelmed.

…As we grew older we began to realize how tight the economic situation really was and how much our parents were sacrificing themselves for us. This encouraged us to work better at school, not to ask for unnecessary things, but rather to be happy with what we had…For instance, I could see how many friends at school had pocket money to buy ice-creams or candy or to play table football. I knew that if I wanted to pay this game, which I loved to do, I would have to use the money I had for my streetcar fare.

This taught me to appreciate that money has to be earned and to understand from an early age that even though it is easy to ask for things, one cannot ask for everything. I began to appreciate the few things I did have and to savor them. Nowadays people do not realize this. Many parents mistakenly consider they have to give their children whatever they ask for, otherwise they will be ‘traumatized.’ The opposite is nearer the truth. My experience was certainly hard and by comparison with my schoolmate quite arduous; but well worthwhile in the long run.

In this sense my family was a model of austerity. I have always given thanks to God for not having been able to sail through life, thinking only on my own enjoyment, and pleasing just myself.

We were a happy family but we were not a ‘perfect family.’ There are no perfect families.’

Happy Wednesday!

ChelseaHumor, videoLeave a Comment

Sometimes you just need a good laugh. Happy Wednesday, everyone! I hope you’re all feeling as good as this old man and, if not, I hope this can at least put a smile on your face!

What would life be without laughter? In case you missed it, here is a great “laughing baby” video that’s been making the rounds lately:

And because you can never get too much baby laughter, here is the original viral ripping paper laughing baby video from a few years ago:

Family of Jane Russell Asks for Donations to Care Net PRC

ChelseaPro Life3 Comments

jane-russell.pngWhen I read the news of the passing of actress Jane Russell (The Outlaw, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) yesterday, I had no idea that she was a pro-life activist. This morning I came across her obit by John Rogers of the AP which says:

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made in her name to either the Care Net Pregnancy and Resource Center of Santa Maria or the Court Appointed Special Advocates of Santa Barbara County.

Intrigued, I headed over to IMDB to see what they had on her and, sure enough, under “trivia” it says:

A longtime pro-life activist, she opposes the use of abortion in any circumstance including rape or incest.

And it quotes her as saying:

People should never, ever have an abortion. Don’t talk to me about it being a woman’s right to choose what she does with her own body. The choice is between life and death.

According to her autobiography, Russell was unable to conceive children as a result of an illegal abortion at age nineteen. She and her first husband, American footballer Bob Waterfield, adopted three children. In the early 50s she campaigned on behalf of the Federal Orphan Adoption Amendment of 1953 (which allows the children of American servicemen born overseas to be placed for adoption in the U.S.) and in 1955 she founded the World Adoption International Fund, an organization that has helped find homes for more than 51,000 babies.

She was, apparently, a deeply religious woman with very conservative political leanings, describing herself as, “a mean-spirited narrow-minded right-wing, conservative Christian.”

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her forever. May her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

*UPDATE* LifeSiteNews has an exclusive with Russell’s daughter-in-law.

Five Year Old Suffers for Souls

ChelseaSufferingLeave a Comment

There is so much wasted suffering in the world today. So often we desperately pray that God will deliver us or a loved one from pain and suffering without also praising Him for the gift of being able to share in the Cross and asking for the strength to persevere in the midst of affliction. Not only can accepting suffering spiritually benefit the suffering individual, but there is, or can be, an apostolic element to suffering as well.

The following note from the family of a 5 year old battling cancer was in my church’s bulletin this week:

In the wee hours of Nathaniel’s birthday, he awoke in agony. He was writhing in pain from about 1:30 onward. We begged him to take medicine: morphine, zophran, antacids, etc, but he utterly refused. When we pressed him to do it at one point, he raised his head after violently throwing up and said, ‘If I had medicine then I couldn’t give my pain to Jesus!’ Why does he want to give it all to Jesus? ‘Because,’ he said, ‘then Jesus turns it into grace and gives it to people who need it.’ Goodness, he humbles me! Though he was up all night, he didn’t let that dampen his spirit in celebrating the day of his birth. He enjoyed every moment of the day, opening piles of mail, playing with his toys, sister, & even a friend from the hospital!”

Uhh…WOW! Now, I’m not implying that we should all be in the habit of refusing to ease pain when it is possible, but this kid gets it – and so young! What did Christ say? I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. (Mt.11:25, Lk. 10:21)

Related:
The Apostolate of Suffering
How Do You Respond to the Cross?
Refusing to Suffer is Refusing to Live

This Woman is My Pro-Life Hero

ChelseaAdult Stem Cell Research, Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Religion, Science1 Comment

Deisher.pngAlright! I finally got around to reading this entire feature in Nature about cellular physiologist Theresa Deisher…and this woman is my new hero. She used to be “very left-wing,” especially when it came to life issues, but now Deisher is an “adamant right-to-lifer” fighting against embryonic stem cell research…in court!

First, her mind was changed about the moral status of the unborn when she encountered the cadaver of a woman embedded in formalin that very much resembled an “alien” looking fetus she saw years before in a pathology lab during a summer job in Sweeden- an experience that, at the time, convinced her that the unborn were not sentient, soul-bearing human beings. This new realization, that the corpse of a grown woman could be so similar to that of a fetus – a “thing”, as she called it – opened up what she calls “a long, slow process” of coming back to the faith of her childhood. A faith she had once shunned in favor of science.

“It’s very difficult to get passion- ately, morally protective of what physically truly is a clump of cells,” she says. “But that is a human being. Scientifically, you can’t debate that.”

Then Deisher became the first person world-wide to identify and patent stem cells from the adult heart which differentiated, she says, into cell types including heart muscle, skeletal and smooth muscle, connective tissue, skin, bone and cartilage. “It was mind-boggling what these cells became,” she said. That was in 1995, well before the first report that human embryonic stem cells had been isolated and, yet, it was still met with “ferocious hostility.” One scientist even cornered her, yelling, “Adult stem cells do not exist out- side the haematopoietic system! Who the blank do you think you are, God?” and Deisher was ordered to stop working on the cells. This opened her eyes to what she says are the very real — and unscientific — passions that can infect defenders of scientific orthodoxy and it lead her “deeply and profoundly” back the faith she had abandoned as a young scientist.

So, she left her former biotech firm and began accepting invitations to speak about stem cell research – about the trouble with embryonic cells and the real benefits of using ethical alternatives. At one event in 2007 she spoke alongside a mother who had adopted a frozen embryo from a fertility clinic. Her daughter, no longer an embryo, stood beside her and Deishler was mesmerized. It was for her “the turning point to become less scientific about it, and actually feel emotion, and a stronger sense of commitment”. She is now, as I said earlier, an “adamant right-to-lifer” – who rises as early as 3:45 a.m. to ride an exercise bike while praying the rosary!

Since then, Deisher helped found a firm in Seattle called AVM (‘Ave Maria’) Biotechnology which is dedicated to developing adult-stem-cell therapies and alternatives to vaccines and therapeutics made using cell lines from aborted fetuses. She is also a plaintiff in the legal case against the NIH guidelines for ESCR funding. A case that is currently being held up in two courts: the higher court, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which resides one level below the Supreme Court, is considering whether Lamberth met the legal standard for granting the preliminary injunction.

You go girl!!

Despite all the opposition she encountered early on in her career, Deisher says the biggest lesson she has learned from the lawsuit is “how many scientists are against [human-embryonic-stem-cell research]. I did not know that. I did not expect the level of support and encouragement that I have received.” Great! Hopefully she’s encouraging them to be more vocal about it.

The stem cell issue has not been much of a hot topic lately. But, just because there is not some major “breakthrough” in the news or stem cell related legislation being considered doesn’t mean that it has gone away or that it’s not being conducted. Actually, because we rarely hear about what kind of studies are going on until after the scientists put together and publish a report about their findings, I shudder when I stop and think of how many human lives are being created, manipulated and destroyed in science labs throughout the country and the world right now! Here in America, there is no ban on ESC research and, while there are still some limits on federal funding for research involving human embryos, many states do appropriate hundreds of thousands of dollars to it.

Video of Baby Joseph

ChelseaEuthanasia, video1 Comment

“Baby Joseph” has been described by doctors and the media as being in a “vegetative state” – a term I think we throw around way too freely these days. According to LifeSiteNews, this “vegetative” baby has to have his hands tied down by doctors because he has managed to remove the tube from his mouth on at least two separate occasions. Now a video has been released showing Joseph reacting to his parents.

According to the video description on YouTube, these videos were taken soon before Baby Joseph was scheduled to have his brearthing tube removed earlier this week. The family has since been told that they are no longer allowed to videotape him – curious.

Sam Sansalone, a spokesman for Joseph’s family asks:

“How could a supposedly persistent vegetative state child have so many occasions of purposeful neuromuscular movements of yanking out their uncomfortable air tube, so many times that hospital staff would have to tie his hands to prevent further episodes?”

Say what you want about whether his movements are “voluntary” or not, but the V-word should never be applied to any human being.

As I said last week when a boy born without cerebellum baffled doctors when he started learning to walk and communicate:

There is a lot about brain activity we simply do not know. Brain scans, etc… can only tell so much and doctors are not mind readers. We should never give up on life when it needs us the most!

What is most frustrating about the story of Baby Joseph is that his parents aren’t asking doctors to go to heroic measures to save or extend his life. They just want to be able to take him home and care for him and make him comfortable until he dies naturally. They announced this afternoon that they are appealing last Thursday’s Ontario Superior Court decision that backed the hospital.