Journeys of a Catholic Poster Girl

There is a Catholic angle. One of AMy’s readers writes:

A reader writes:

This falls way down low on the scale of importance, but as an Ohio State fan, I wanted to pass this along.

Buckeye Coach Jim Tressel is Catholic. When I was living in Youngstown and he was still a coach at Youngstown State , I used to see him at mass downtown at St. Columba Cathedral on Holy Days.

At the end of the game last night, the reporter put the microphone in his face and asked him about the win. I couldn’t hear what he was saying over the screaming fans (on the TV and in my house), but one word did get through: Humility. He was talking about humility after one of the biggest wins of his career.

Like I said, this is all unimportant, but he is a highly visible, well-liked individual who is Catholic. I wish someone would ask him about how his faith influences his coaching. I was a reporter in my youth, and I think a bio piece that focused on his faith would make a great story…

As a musician, I just had to post this (h/t: Amy)

Last night, Pope Benedict attended a concert given by the Berlin Philharmonia Quartet, “hosted” by Federal President Horst Koehler of Germany. He said, in part (translated by Teresa Benedetta at PRF):

When soloists make music together, each individual is required not only to give all his technical and musical capabilities in playing his part, but at the same time, to remain attentive in listening to the others. Only when each player does not seek to stand out but rather seeks to perform in the service of togetherness and makes himself an ‘instrument’ through which the composer’s thought becomes sound and can reach the listener’s heart, only then can a great interpretation occur – as we have just heard.

That is a beautiful image even for us, who work in the Church, to be ‘instruments’ or ‘tools’ to transmit to our fellowmen the thoughts of the great Composer whose work is the the harmony of the universe.

snip

The compositions we just heard have helped us to meditate on the complexity of life and its little daily happenings. Every day is a weave of joys and sorrows, hopes and disappointments, expectations and surprises, that alternate eventfully and raise within us the fundamental questions of ‘where from”, “where to” and the real sense of our existence.

Music, which expresses all these perceptions of the spirit, offers the listener, within an hour like we have just spent, the possibility of scrutinizing, as in a mirror, the events of our personal life as well as universal history.

But it offers us more: through its sounds, it carries us to another world and harmonizes our intimate being. Finding thus a moment of peace, we become able to see, as from a high vantage point, the mysterious realities that man seeks to decipher and which the light of faith helps us to better understand.

In effect, we can imagine the history of the world as a marvelous symphony that God has composed and whose excution He Himself leads as a wise orchestra conductor. Even if to us, the score may often seem complex and difficult, He knows it from the first to the last note.

We are not called on to take the baton into our hands, much less to change the music according to our taste. But we are called, each in his place and according to his capacity, to collaborate with the great Master in executing his stuoendous masterpiece. And in the course of its execution, we would also be given gradually to understand the great design of the Divine score.

And so, dear friends, we see how music can lead us to prayer: it invites us to lift our minds towards God to find in Him the reason for our hope as well as support in the difficulties of life.

Faithful to His commandments, and respecting His salvific plan, we can construct together a world which will resound with the consoling melody of a transcendent symphony of love.

The same divine Spirit will make us all into well-harmonized instruments and responsible collaborators in the admirable performance through which the plan for universal salvation is expressed through the centirues.

From Rod:
Lovely, kind words from Bishop Schori of ECUSA, re: CAtholics and kids.

Comprehensive — that’s today’s euphemism for “as eager as possible to drive this sucker off the cliff with the windows down and horn blaring.” Here is is used by Presiding Bishop Kathleen Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church, in an Q&A interview with the NYT Magazine:

They may be dying on the vine, but at least they’ll go out thinking well of themselves. Since there’s apparently no hope of stopping the ongoing suicide of the Episcopal Church, I think I’ll probably have to stop worrying about it on behalf of the good and long-suffering Episcopalian friends I have, and learn to enjoy this kind of thing. You really can’t make comic characters like Bishop Schori up.

Gee, how’s aobut “well, we don’t have a comprehensive doctrine, we really don’t beleive what the Bible teaches, and we’ve long since given up on having any actual positions on anything…that’s why there’s only 2.2 million of us left.”

All of this talk about preemie babies and “deformed” (or whatever PC term you’d like to use) kids, and their status, has given way to some deep thinking on my part.

Given my own circumstances, it is hard for me not to be moved to anger/frustration/resentment when I read these articles. So many of them are just poring with condescension and “we know better than you” attitudes. The phrase “Nazi-like” or “Hitler-like” (or their derivitatives) are so often overused today, but in these cases, they ring true. This is precisely what occured during WWII. It is precisely what people said would never occur again, that we have to respect human life and not devalue it to such a base and worthless thing. And yet we do, step by step. And we do it by sugar-coating it in terms like “the dignity of life,” “dying with dignity”, or that we’re “saving” or “preventing” these children from suffering tremendous pain, or from being disabled. We read nice stories in Oprah’s magazine about how old, dying women in Oregon get their deadly drugs perscriped by a doctor, filled at the pharmacy, and then just wait for the ‘opportune’ day to die, because they just can’t live like this anymore. In Holland they commit infanticide regularly. Euthanasia on demand is a fact of life. Britain seems to be heading that way now. And in Oregon you can do it. Dr. Kevorkian did it for years before he was sent to jail. What used to be relegated to the Hemlock Society and the fringes of ethical debate is now something that mainstream medical journals (such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the British OB/GYNs talk about quite calmly and rationally. And there isn’t any huge backlash. No editorials in the papers denouncing it. No shocked anchors on the news.

Is it because we, as a society, as a people, have become so unused to suffering, to struggle, to really feeling pain, that we can’t abide thinking about it at all? Is it because since we know we have the technology to “take care” of these problems we can- and should- use it? I think it’s just one more sign of the pervasity of the Culture of Death we are surrounded in. It is almost Darwinian. If you’re too slow, too old, too sick, then we don’t want you. You serve no purpose for us. But where does that leave us?

I know that suffering is not a picnic. It’s not something anyone would wish to undergo. I don’t wake up in the morning going, “Yay! How can I suffer today?” It just doesn’t happen. But I have never, ever wished I was dead. Or that my parents had killed me when I was born, instead of giving me the rich, full, incredible life I’ve had. My parents say the same thing (we’ve discussed this). Have things be hard? Heck, ya! My parents and my siblings and I have done things, learned things, seen things and endured things that most people never will. And yet we are stronger for it. Life is a wonderful gift we cherish.

Think about your life for a minute. Think about the every day existence of it, the great things we take for granted. The first snowfall. Rain int he spring. Flowers blooming. A sunrise. A sunset. Playing with little kids. A baby’s smile. Your first kiss. Eating chocolate. We are saying that some people are not worth having these experiences. That their lives are too disabled. They won’t “Get it.” How arrogant is that? Sure, maybe they won’t experience it like you. But you know,they probably experience many, many more things on a more profound level than you do. Because they know than any day it could go to Hell. (heck, any hour it could go to Hell) Helen Keller once said something to the effect that the view from the mountain top isn’t as rewarding if you haven’t gone through any valleys. And she’s right.

One of the things that can be gleaned about the value of suffering to the human experience can be seen in literature. In The Little Mermaid , the mermaid wants love so much that she gives up her family, and eventually dies, to become human. She suffers greatly as one, and knows she may, but still becomes human anyway. If you’ve seen the film The Last Unicorn , you know that the magician turns the unicorn into a woman to save her life and allow her to save her fellow unicorns from the ocean trap they’ve been placed in. At the end of the movie, she says that she’s the only unicorn in the world who has known regret and love. She doesn’t regret what happened…she regrets missing her true love, Prince Lear. There are other examples, I’m sure, but this is what I’ve got right now. (I guess Pinnochio could be an example, too) The human experience is full of love, joy, pain, suffering. The ying and yang of life. Yet we are willing to deny that to some of these. We are killing them, not even giving them a voice, or a chance to experience what we take for granted every day.

When we die, I wonder what these children will say to us? I cannot imagine God is pleased. He has given us this great gift and we treat it so callously, throw it all away. He gives us chances to grow, to become closer to Him. And we deny them. What does that say about our character?

–
“God loves those to whom he can give more, those who expect more from Him, those who are open, those who sense their need and rely on Him for everything.” –Mother Teresa

is beyond me. …

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15738245/

OK, I’ve read Arthur Kaplan for a few years now and he always, always ALWAYS manages to “get my dander up.” Always. And his writing on the brouhaha in England is another piece of work:

American law was intended to protect the rights of the disabled. For many years children born with Down syndrome or spina bifida were not given aggressive treatment if their parents did not want it or if doctors deemed it inappropriate. But in the early 1980s, the Reagan administration and the famous Surgeon General C. Everett Koop protested these practices, resulting in the passing of a law that stopped discrimination of the disabled in the neonatal nursery.

But the federal law went too far. In its effort to ensure that children were not allowed to die simply because they had a disability, Congress wrote a law that was overly restrictive.

A 22-week-old premature baby is not in the same medical circumstances as a child born with Down syndrome who simply requires a surgical repair of his digestive tract to survive.

Extremely premature infants are the nightmare of every neonatal hospital and obstetrician. Medicine does not know how to save them and when it tries, if often produces a child whose life is very short and whose suffering is beyond description.

Oh, my goodness. Suffering beyond description. Life is very short. So let’s just kill them! Yes, that’s the answer!

We are so afraid of suffering, as a people. it really makes me kind of sick. Everyone suffers. Everyone has pain. There is no way to escape it. So let’s just kill them before they can experience it? Eh??? Where do you draw the line? Who are we to decide these things?

There is a limit to what medicine can do. Tiny preemies should not be forced to endure care that does not work and that only prolongs dying, and most major religious traditions understand that. Existing American law is too restrictive — we wind up giving treatment when common sense and basic respect for human dignity say we ought not.

The new British report has the courage to take on this problem. It may go too far in the other direction of prohibiting care. The right answer lies somewhere in between

“Giving treatment when common sense and basic respect for human dignity say we ought not?” Look, I’m not going to listen to this guy lecture me about human dignity. His track record doesn’t give him that much credit. This is the same guy that didn’t want to give Terri Schiavo food and water. So y’know.

So the Brits have “courage,” huh? Yup, courage to encourage infanticide. What in the world are we talking about? Can anyone else not read this and go, “we’re crazy. Absolutely nutty.” Because I sure can’t.

Got this in my email box today and checked it out….looks good!!! LIsa sent it to me:

I was hoping you may be interested in a new Podcast we are doing as part of our apostolate for the Third Order of Carmel (Secular Order). It is called Meditations from Carmel and features short meditations directly from authentic translations of the saints of Carmel like Sts. Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux and Teresa of the Andes.

If you could stop on by for a listen that would be GREAT! If you might let your readership know about us that would be even GREATER! We are trying very hard to get the word out, but it is slow going.

Please take a moment and visit us at:

Meditations from Carmel

or www.stl-ocds.org

Respectable Baby Killing
Support builds for legalizing euthanasia for ill and disabled newborns.

By Wesley J. Smith

The push to permit infanticide has entered the mainstream. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology (RCOG) has recommended that a debate be had about whether to permit “deliberate interventions to kill infants.” The recommendation, which was widely reported in the media, was in response to a query from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics concerning ethical issues pertaining to health care which prolongs the life of newborns. It was at the urging of the RCOG that euthanasia of infants was added to the topics that the council would consider. As reported by the London Times, the RCOG’s recommendation states:

A very disabled child can mean a disabled family. If life-shortening and deliberate interventions to kill infants were available, they might have an impact on obstetric decision-making, even preventing some late term abortions, as some parents would be more confident about continuing a pregnancy and taking a risk on outcome.

The article goes on to quote a number of British doctors and professors who support euthanasia.

Consider carefully what has happened here. A prestigious medical association has seriously suggested that killing some babies because they are seriously ill or disabled might be ethically acceptable and, at the very least, is worthy of considered and respectable debate. It is about time that people start paying attention to this. Those who think that legal infanticide is unthinkable and preposterous are being naïve. Infanticide advocacy is no longer limited to rogue bioethicists, such as Princeton University’s notorious Peter Singer, who has famously argued that parents be given as much as a year to decide whether to keep or kill their babies.

In fact, it has been some time since Singer was the dominant voice of infanticide advocacy. In recent years, articles aimed at normalizing the killing of disabled babies have appeared in some of the world’s most established medical publications. For example, the March 10, 2005, edition of the New England Journal of Medicine published an article by Dutch physicians who have admitted to having euthanized 15-20 disabled infants. The NEJM provided them with a respectable forum in which to propose formal regulations to govern what amounts to eugenic infanticide. The so-called “Groningen Protocol” (named after the Dutch hospital where the infanticides took place) posits three categories of killable infants: babies “with no chance of survival”; infants with a “poor prognosis and [who] are dependent on intensive care”; and “infants with a hopeless prognosis,” including those “not depending on intensive medical treatment but for whom a very poor quality of life…is predicted.”

Such journal articles were reported on approvingly in the mainstream media. For example, the July 10, 2005, New York Times Magazine published a column by frequent contributor Jim Holt proposing the merits of the Groningen Protocol. Holt suggested that the decision to kill ill or disabled babies should be governed by “a new moral duty,” namely, “the duty prevent suffering, especially futile suffering.”

The debate over infant euthanasia is usually framed as a collision between two values: sanctity of life and quality of life. Judgments about the latter, of course, are notoriously subjective and can lead you down a slippery slope. But shifting the emphasis to suffering changes the terms of the debate. To keep alive an infant whose short life expectancy will be dominated by pain — pain that it can neither bear nor comprehend — is, it might be argued, to do that infant a continuous injury.

At first blush, this might seem reasonable, but Holt’s game of semantics does not provide him with traction on the slippery slope. The concept of suffering is not limited to pain, but must also take account of “quality of life,” as more liberal advocates of infanticide would surely point out. More insidiously, Holt’s advocacy could lead to a perceived duty to kill disabled babies since he argues that not killing a disabled baby could be to inflict injury upon the child.

Such arguments are really a veneer for the real issues, which are money and commitment. Disabled infants are expensive to care for, particularly if they don’t die young, and they require all sorts of attention. The nub of the issue isn’t about our supposed inability to alleviate the suffering of infants — a false supposition— but rather, about our not wanting to spend the financial and emotional resources it would take to do so. This position is clearly central to the RCOG’s statement — and was explicitly ratified in a November 9, 2006, editorial in The Economist calling the RCOG’s call to debate infanticide “brave” and urging that infanticide be seriously considered because “Disabled children are nine times more likely than others to end up in the care of the state.”

Infanticide, alas, has become a respectable notion, at least among some elite opinion makers. History shows that this is how baby killing begins — by convincing ourselves that there is such a thing as a human life not worth living, and hence, not worth protecting. By calling for a serious debate about infanticide, the RCOG has badly subverted the foundational moral principle that each and every human being has equal moral value simply and merely because he or she is human.

— Wesley J. Smith, a frequent contributor to NRO, is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His website is www.wesleyjsmith.com.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Does it matter, anyway?
It occurred to me this morning, listening to an NPR report on the Catholic bishops’ statement about homosexuality, that activists and interested observers on both sides are probably too worked up over this policy statement. Love it or hate it, does anybody believe it will actually change anything at the local level? It’s not like the Catholic Church has been silent on its position on homosexuality. I believe that dioceses and parishes will do exactly as they have been doing, for better or for worse. One thing that struck me as someone coming to Catholicism from the outside years ago was how there is much less to the dogmatic and hierarchical nature of Catholicism than it appears. I thought that priests and bishops, at least, took marching orders from the Pope and from the Magisterium. Ideally, yes, but that’s not how it works out in practice. For me, it was a real shock to discover, when I was living in the Archdiocese of Miami and preparing for marriage, that you couldn’t find a single parish that taught Natural Family Planning. I found a Couple-to-Couple League teaching couple, who told me that they had been formally turned away by parish after parish, with the message that Catholic couples preparing for marriage didn’t need to hear what they had to say.

The point being that the Pope’s teaching, the magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church, and even the official positions adopted by the bishops, can and do get undermined at the diocesan and parish level, by the diocesan bureaucracies.

What do you think? Do you think the bishops’ teaching on homosexuality will filter down to the diocese and parish level? That is, will it make a bit of difference?

On the homosexual ministry thing:

Donald W. Wuerl, Washington’s new archbishop, said the document should not be seen as a crackdown on pro-gay ministries. Rather, he said, “the starting point is the church living in a culture in which these things are being promoted, and our task is to keep saying: ‘Remember, here are the true teachings of the church.’ “

a Change in doctrine? Read the WaPo story below…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11  /14/AR2006111401337.html

ME: one note… here’s one choice bit from the article:

The decisions are part of a mounting backlash in many U.S. denominations against church groups whose stated goal is not only to welcome but also to “affirm” gay congregants. For many religious groups, the biblical injunction to hate the sin but love the sinner is no longer sufficient, because many believers do not view homosexuality as a sin.

Um, homosexual acts are condemned throughout the Bible. It’s pretty clear how the Bible feels on this. So how can these denominations, who claim to be “Bible based”, or follow Sola Scriptura claim that the Bible is wrong? Or at least that it’s not “current”? That’s essentially what they’re doing with these rulings. How confused must their adherents be? “Well, only part of what’s in the Bible is true…the rest we can ‘interpret.’”

Reason 5,670,025 why I’m glad I’m Catholic.