Rejected Stones

I swear, you’re going to start thinking this blog is about nothing but the Liturgy of the Hours.

Last night, while praying Vespers, I had a bit of a lightbulb moment as I read the New Testament reading:

READING 1 Peter 2:4-5

Come to the Lord, a living stone, rejected by men but approved, nonetheless, and precious in God’s eyes. You too are living stones, built as an edifice of spirit into a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Quo Vadis? by Annibale Carracci

Jesus is the Living Cornerstone, rejected by the builders, Who makes us living stones to build up His Church.

And, if the world rejects the Cornerstone, chances are they aren’t going to be really fond of the rest of the stones God gives them, either. I’ve really been stuck lately thinking about the world’s rejection of Christian influence – at least in Western culture. I am not being defeatist about it, for I know Who wins in the end. And my hope is not in this world – in princes or governments or their laws – but is in Christ Jesus Himself. And I know that no matter how bad things get, the gates of Hell will never prevail against God’s Church. I’ll always have a home on earth in the Church, and if I stick with her, she’ll get me to Heaven to my real home.

But I can’t get away from the idea that we are moving rapidly into a time when the Culture of Death reigns in America.

I’ve heard some Christians say that America is the world’s best hope, but this is completely untrue. Jesus Himself said that the world would hate us, just as it hated Him. He calls on us to pick up our crosses and follow Him. He promised persecution. And we won’t be spared just because we love the Lord and strive to do His will. To think so would be heresy. God promised us the opposite in this life, as a matter of fact.

When we become living stones in the Lord’s Church, we’ll get the same treatment as Jesus did. It won’t all be dark, but we certainly are not to be spared our share of sufferings in the name of the Lord. Some will be small ones – perhaps someone attempts to slander you unfairly – and some will be larger ones – perhaps you risk fines and jail for refusing to obey an unjust law.

What really matters is what we do with our sufferings. God knows we’ll try to avoid them when we can, but when we cannot … then what?

Do we offer these sufferings up as Jesus did, for the good of others? Do we bear all wrongs patiently, as Jesus did? Do we accept that sometimes, despite our best efforts, we have rough patches to go through? Do we show our mourning or do we wash our faces and present ourselves to the world as people with an inner, sublime kind of joy?

Lord, help me bear my sufferings with patience. Allow me the graces to endure to the end for Your name’s sake. May all I do and say give you glory and further the interests of You and your Holy Church.

It’s Not My Place

Crucifixion of Jesus (Russian Icon) by Dionisius

Jesus died outside the gate, to sanctify the people by his own blood. Let us go to him outside the camp, bearing the insult which he bore. For here we have no lasting city; we are seeking one which is to come. Through him let us continually offer God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips which acknowledge his name.

By magister at he.wikipedia (Originally from he.wikipedia) [see page for license], from Wikimedia Commons

 As I knelt in the chapel near the Blessed Sacrament after Mass last night, I prayed my evening prayers. The above passage from Hebrews was the reading during Vespers for Holy Thursday. It’s not the first time I had read it, and each time I am more struck by it.

In years past, I might not have thought about it except in the terms Saint Paul is speaking in to the recipients of the letter he wrote. His fellow Jews-turned-Christians, being rejected and shunned by their fellow Jews who do not believe the Gospel. How heartbreaking it must have been for them to be rejected by family and friends because of their belief in Jesus as Christ. Saint Paul encouraged them to hold fast to the Christ, knowing that their true home is Heaven, where Jesus promised that He would prepare a place for us.

But these days, I’ve felt under assault. I gave up Twitter for Lent, as I’ve found it to be a good way to clear my head and get away from the shouting (so to speak) that tends to occur there. There can be a lot of vitriol on all sides of every issue, and even though I’ve been culling my follow list to gradually eliminate people who have nothing but this kind of attitude, it still wears on me. So with the exception of a few hours on the Feast of Saint Joseph, I haven’t been on Twitter’s site. My blog and Flickr pictures both auto-post there, as well as Facebook, but aside from that, I haven’t been on.

Then came the Supreme Court hearing on gay “marriage.”

HRC’s New Symbol

Suddenly, I was feeling just as assaulted on Facebook. I felt more and more frantic as the day went on. It didn’t help that I had started following the actor George Takei, who in the past had one of the funniest feeds I’ve ever seen. I’m telling you, the guy has some of the funniest graphics, filled with geek humor and puns, and it’s almost always hilarious to read. There were occasional posts of his where he’d celebrate his homosexuality or make mention of his “husband,” but it was easy to simply scroll past the posts, since the vast majority of them were just these silly puns and geeky pictures about Sci Fi/Fantasy topics.

But beginning on Tuesday, when he decided to switch his profile picture to the red equal sign, his feed changed from the occasional post on homosexuality to a non-stop barrage of nothing BUT homosexual “marriage” posts. One after another, filling my feed, in my face, with comments showing below (only two or three at a time) calling people who don’t support redefining marriage as bigots, haters, the equivalent of racists, idiots, etc. Seeing the occasional red equal sign or post in favor from family and friends wasn’t going to make me un-friend them, but a non-stop, nothing-but-gay-”marriage” stream was enough for me to un-like Takei’s page and decide to take a break from Facebook for the Triduum.

As Jayne would say, it was damaging my calm.

I’ve been feeling more and more as though our culture is less and less okay with people truly living their faith. Oh, going to church on Sundays is fine, but don’t bring your beliefs with you to work or into your business. Don’t tell us what you think if you’re in the public eye or have a big business. (Unless, of course, you support the Culture of Death; then it’s fine to talk about your beliefs and let them guide your business model.) It’s fine if your Catholic belief wants you to go out and perform the Corporal Works of Mercy, but don’t tell me that those same beliefs demand that you not give material cooperation to mortal sins like abortion and contraception. Paying for those things for other people is now considered a human right!

America is not what she once was; in fact, I’d say she’s pretty close to gone. And things are not going back to the way they were.

This isn’t said in despair. It’s a fact. Our culture worships the orgasm, as Frank Weathers would say. Our culture believes in choice as long as it’s related to unrestricted sex, but not if it has to do with actual laws written down, the right to life, or even the right to practice and live out our faith on a daily basis. The very idea that a person’s faith would inform every aspect of his life is anathema to our Culture of Death.

The Rich Young Man by Ai.kefu

And yet this is exactly what we’re called to. Now that we know the Gospel, what do we do with it? What impact will it have on our lives? Any at all? Will it change us forever? Will we be as the rich young man, who was offered Christ Himself and turned away because his life as he was living it was too good, or will we be as Matthew, who saw that as good as his life might be, it was nothing in comparison to living a life with Jesus.

Even though I have seen the story about the rich young man geared towards the vocation of the priest, I also can see it as every one of us in many ways. Are we willing to give up all of our comforts, even if it’s gradual and one at a time, in order to be faithful followers of Christ? Are we willing to be different, to live differently than others (and even our past selves) in order to live as Christians?

Are we willing to endure ridicule, persecution, and the pain of lost friendships for standing firm in our beliefs and following the doctrines of our Church? Are we willing, if it comes to it, to lose everything just to be with Him?

In this life, we have no city. Our true home is in Heaven with God. One of the first questions in the old Baltimore Catechism reminded us of this fact:

Question: Why did God make you?

Answer: God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.

And, truly, the better we know God and work to understand His love for us, the more willing we are to serve him in this life. When we begin to grasp His love and mercy, we don’t mind serving Him in this world. His yoke is easy and His burden is light because when you love someone, it’s not a burden to do things for them in love.

As times become darker for Christians in this world, it will do well for us to remember:

For here we have no lasting city; we are seeking one which is to come.

The Calling of Saint Matthew by Hendrick ter Brugghen

Addicted to Excitement

Our culture constantly pushes the idea that things need to be exciting. An ad for a credit card features a man whose girlfriend breaks up with him for being “boring,” which he cures by spending money on taking world-wide trips, buying backstage passes at concerts, taking cooking courses, and more – all in an effort to prove to himself (and perhaps the ex-girlfriend) that he’s not really boring.

Our theme parks are constantly pushing the envelope on excitement, making roller coasters go faster, turn harder, and be more extreme. Rides are more frightening than they used to be, and they must be to keep up with the thrill-a-minute movies they are based on. Who wants to ride a carousel when you can ride a roller coaster that does this?

The Dodonpa Coaster in Japan

And if that’s not exciting enough, why not be the car on a roller coaster?

Fun?

Skydiving is so passe, when you can pretend to be a flying squirrel.

All of this is a part of our culture’s addition to excitement.

But to have real excitement, you don’t need to jump off planes, dive off cliffs, ride a roller coaster that puts enough strain on your body to injure your back, or even buy backstage passes to an Alicia Keyes concert. The real adventure is in the exact thing our current society tells you to put off as long as possible, and then, if you dip your toe in, don’t go full-on and get carried away with it.

Real excitement, real fun, and definitely-not-boring life is to be found within a family.

What Could be More Exciting than Thing 1 and Thing 2?

I heard Philip Rivers in an interview on EWTN Radio last month, in which he commented on his home life, where he and his wife Tiffany are raising their six children, “It’s never dull!” I read Simcha Fisher’s columns at National Catholic Register or on her blog and laugh out loud at her family’s hilarities and doings. I look at pictures of my friends’ families – I know a lot of large, Catholic families – and see people who bring excitement with them everywhere you go!

Granted, not all the excitement is happy; spending time in the ER with your child because of some awful injury is exciting in the wrong kind of way. However, just being together is fun and exciting, and someone can always come up with an idea of something to do when you put enough people together.

Our culture has this idea that you have to put off marriage and a family until you’ve done what you want to do in life. Take care of what you want first! (And those of us who see matrimony as the top thing we want to do are looked at as a bit odd.) Do for yourself! Cross off that bucket list! Travel! Experience! Find excitement!!

Basically, our culture is telling young people to be selfish first, then try to stop being selfish – maybe – and get married. Then, when you and your spouse are done doing your couple-things and doing what you want together, then it’s okay to maybe have your 2 kids. (If there’s time. Biological clocks are a pain that way, not really changing how they work to fit this new model of life we’ve come up with.)

I remember reading a post by Jennifer Fulweiler recently about her anniversary and the discovery that she and her husband are expecting again. It was so full of awesome that I printed it out and carried it to my daughter’s dance class to re-read it. (I left my copy there – oopsie – where someone else might see it.) This is the part that made my just full-out cry:

It didn’t take long to see that there was nothing to fear. Immediately upon our conversions, our marriage experienced an explosion of life: we became open to life, which led us to see children completely differently than we did before. Not only did we start having more kids, but we were surrounded by the people of our parish, our diocese, and the entire Body of Christ. Our new suburban house suddenly became a hub of activity, with kids and friends and neighbors in and out all the time — none of which would have ever happened in our old life. It was loud. It was chaotic. It was messy. It was more work than I’d ever had to do in my life. It made us wish the original owner of our house had not installed white carpeting. But, interestingly, we never yearned for our old way of life. Not once.

One day we looked around and saw that our museum was gone. All the stuff that we’d arranged so carefully to suit our tastes had had to be rearranged to accommodate other people’s tastes. The hustle and bustle of so many other people running through our lives meant that things got knocked down, broken, and moved. Life was no longer about just us anymore; we had to consider other folks’ comfort in addition to our own. And it was a wonderful feeling when we realized that our museum was no longer there…because it had been transformed into a home.

Tomorrow night Joe and I will probably celebrate our nine years of marriage with a quick toast, in the approximately four minutes we will have between when the last kid goes to bed and when one or both of us falls face-down on the floor from exhaustion. And when we do we’ll toast to the good life, and thank God that we finally found it.

(Okay, I am crying now again. Thanks, Jen.)

Here’s the funny thing: our culture has it completely backwards. 

Little Newbie

Excitement – the kind that’s good for us – comes from what we create in our homes. It comes from our family. It’s when your first child takes her first step, or when your next one stops crying because her sister sings a song to her that you used to sing when she cried.

It’s when you see your husband running alongside a bicycle, and he lets go and your child keeps on going, shrieking in delight at the accomplishment. It’s when you save for a vacation and bring your kids to Disney World and they see Cinderella and vibrate with happiness. It’s when you can’t take a big vacation so you stay home for a week and play board games and make cookies together.

It’s when you borrow a movie from the library that you grew up loving and share it with your kids for the first time. It’s when you see the world through their eyes, and you suddenly see wonder if a bunny hopping across your lawn. It’s when you take them to the town’s Christmas tree lighting and you look at their faces instead of the tree.

“I love you!”

This is exciting. This is life.

When my husband and I were preparing for our tenth anniversary celebration, we made a Power Point slideshow with music. We struggled to find pictures of the two of us – five years’ worth of marriage – for the first of three songs, but then struggled to fit in all the pictures of our second five years, which started with the birth of our first child.

I looked at the pictures and said, “It’s as though our lives didn’t begin until they came along.”

And that’s the truth. Life begins when we open up to it. Once you open yourself up to life, it pours in and fills the voids in life. And that’s pretty exciting.

 

Still Happy

Letter to Joe Biden

For her religion class this week, my 11 year old read a chapter about respecting life. Her assignment for the chapter is to write in her journal about her experiences with 40 Days for Life, which she plans to do; however, before she did that, she asked to write a letter to our vice president, Joe Biden. Knowing that Biden was raised Catholic and claims to be Catholic to this day, she’s saddened to know that he supports abortion openly.

I gave her no input at all (except to confirm that Mr. Biden does, indeed, have children), and the medical information, while it can be found at any pregnancy information site online, was found in a 1999 pamphlet from Focus on the Family called “The First Nine Months.” (This link is to their updated version of the pamphlet.) Her letter brought me to tears, and I asked her if I could share it with people. With her permission, here is her letter (with her personal information redacted). The picture is the one she put on the letter, with the same caption.

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Mr. Vice President Joe Biden,

My name is *****, and I am Catholic. I am eleven years old and very strongly pro-life. I understand that you are a Catholic. But are you really a Catholic? You support abortion, which is a very harmful act. This letter is on the topic of abortion.

Baby In the Womb at Five Months

As you know, the Fifth Commandment of God is: Thou shalt not kill. This goes for everything, including little tiny ‘clumps of cells’ inside a woman’s body. Are you aware of the fact that a baby’s heart is beating at the age of 3 weeks in the womb? At five weeks, you can begin to see tiny fingers and toes, and the eyes are darkening from pigment produced. At week 8, the embryo is called a fetus, which is Latin for ‘young one’ or ‘offspring.’ In this week, everything is present that we have now, only it is small. The heart has been beating for more than a month, and  many other things, such as the kidneys, have already started their work. The eighth week is when most abortions are performed. In the fifth month, it is easy to tell that it is a baby: he/she has visible fingers and finger nails, eyes, lips, and nostrils. How can you say this is not a baby?

Besides the fact that it is a crime to kill someone (‘someone’ counts as a tiny baby not even out of its mother’s womb), it is not our job to decide when life begins or ends. God alone decides it. If you murder someone, you are committing both a crime and a mortal sin.

Even just supporting abortion is a mortal sin. Would you kill your child? You saw how precious they were when they were first born. A baby in the womb is already a whole person, only littler.

I know someone who has recently had a miscarriage. They were very unhappy when the baby died. Would they be unhappy if it was just a clump of scar tissue and cells, and not a child?

So you see, if you really were a Catholic, you would recognize these things. I hope this letter helped you spiritually.

“Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that eternal life abides in no murderer’s heart.”                                 

-1 John 3:15

Sincerely,

****** ******

Thoughts on Why Romney Lost

I haven’t got the heart to really write well about this today, so I’m copying and pasting a bit from Twitter this morning. There, I was looking at Republicans and conservatives bemoaning and trying to figure out what kind of candidate the GOP needs to put forth in order to win. But most of them are off-base.  Here’s what I said there:

#FACT: The GOP can reach out all it wants, but as long as America loves the #CultureOfDeath as much as she does, it won’t do a damn thing. The problem isn’t necessarily our candidates, but the fact that our country is largely selfish. And it lies on BOTH sides of the aisle. Yes, Libs have cultivated culture of Gimme Free Stuff, but Conservatives are often just as selfish when it comes to Christian duty to poor. [And here I am not talking about more government programs, for Catholic Social Teaching does not require us to have a leviathan government that provides for people. Authentic Catholic Social Justice comes from *us* - the people in the neighborhoods that are hurting. But that's for another day.] So until our country learns humility and true charity, this is what we get: a small, petty man to be president of a small, petty country.

The fact is, the majority of people in our country now see selfishness and nihilism as more important than true charity and the protection of life and liberty. People would rather have meaningless sex with whomever they choose (no matter how empty they feel afterwards) than try to live up to a higher standard. They’d rather play God and decide whose life is worth living (from womb to tomb) than to see the inherent dignity of every human soul. They’d rather have a comfortable life provided by others than try to work hard and improve their own lot. And they’d rather have the stuff they want given to them than look at what freedoms they’re taking away from others in order to get them.

So the fact is, it’s not who the GOP puts out there that’s the problem. It’s our culture. We live in a Culture of Death, one that has embraced Death whole-heartedly. One in which children are seen as optional burdens that we may or may not take on, and in which we are willing to allow government panels to look at cost efficiency when it comes to deciding the level of care our loved ones will receive.

But we have Obamaphone, we have sosh security, we have Obamacare. And we’ve got Swamp People and Honey Boo Boo and Dancing with the Stars and Survivor and American Idol and TV shows that desensitize our families to gay “marriage.” We can’t drink 32 ounces of Coke in New York City, but we can legally light a joint in Colorado and under Obamacare my 14 year old daughter can be put on the Pill without my knowledge or consent.

Who cares if we don’t have liberty? Who cares if Catholics are forced underground because of the oppression that has begun under this president?

As long as we have bread and circuses, we’re all good.

The Church has survived this. The gates of Hell shall not prevail.

Mad Men & Fifty Shades of Grey: Two Easy Steps to Lead Yourself into Mortal Sin

How Do These People Lead Us to Sin?

“Mad Men” is a pretty popular show. People talk about it all the time, rave about the cool-factor of the show, and have started bringing back the fashions of the early 1960′s (which I welcome, personally). So I decided to try watching it. I was hit in the first episode with adultery. Then as I progressed through the first season on Netflix, the adultery became more widespread through the characters. Serial adulterers.

Let’s not pretty this up with nice words like “affair.” A wedding can be called a “formal affair.” An affair is, according to the dictionary:

Cad

This is far too kind for what adultery is: a mortal sin that rips families apart while it kills the soul of the people involved in the infidelity. And “Mad Men” is rife with it. Don Draper, who is supposed to be striking the “tragic hero” pose, is one of the worst. And he shows no regret for his disgusting actions. This is not a true tragic hero, who has flaw that he battles and attempts to overcome. Don doesn’t care. He sleeps with all manner of women, then goes home to his unsuspecting wife and children and pretends to be the devoted husband. He rips into his wife for wearing a bikini (“It makes you look desperate,” he tells her) after lying to her about where he was and why when he totalled his car. He is a liar and a hypocrite. And he doesn’t care or make attempts to not be one.

Constant exposure to this show over the last few months has done a bit of coarsening of my soul, making me less aware of spiritual dangers. I wasn’t paying as much attention to my thoughts, words, and actions. And I didn’t realize this fully until last night, when I succumbed to curiosity about the popular book 50 Shades of Grey. It’s all over the place, with all kinds of women reading it. It’s been mentioned on the news, the ladies of The View asked the president about it (he joked that he’d “ask Michelle” about it). I’ve heard it touted as a “sex book,” but that does not do justice to what it really is. Not suspecting exactly what kind of book it is, I picked it up at Barnes & Noble last night and read part of it.

Three Things to Avoid this Summer

It is porn.

Plain and simple, that is what it is. It’s not even original porn (as if there’s much of that, anyway), but a three-part rip-off of the non-fiction book 9 1/2 Weeks (made into a toned-down movie version in the 1980′s). But you can get similar stories in shorter form from Penthouse Forum.

I am absolutely shocked that this has become a mainstream best-selling book. To what depths has our culture sunk when a sado-masochistic sex fantasy – hard porn – sits out in the middle of Barnes & Noble for anyone to pick up and read?

IT’S SITTING AT THE FRONT OF THE STORE ON THEIR BESTSELLER SHELF!

No one – Christian, Catholic, or whatever – should be reading this trash. No one should kill their soul for a few cheap thrills that objectify people. Fiction or not, the one being objectified is you (and your lover, if you’re using this as some kind of turn-on).

Not only should you not be reading this, but it occurs to me that someone needs to get Barnes & Noble to pull this from the shelves where it sits next to the Teen Best Sellers in their stores.  (If I’m not mistaken, my B&N has those shelves side-by-side.)

Spread the word, and pray for our culture.

Governor Mandates Via Executive Order That Adoption Services Must be Offered at All Abortion Clinics

Adoption Services to Become Mandatory?

In a recent executive order, Bob McDonnell (R-VA) has ordered that all clinics that provide abortions first provide patients with specific information on adoption services.  Pamphlets given out must meet certain guidelines and be from state-approved lists of adoption service providers.  All health centers must be ready for on-the-spot inspections of their premises, as well as secret-shopper-style visits from undercover representatives of the state government who will report back to a new special council set up by the governor. The council has been given the power to fine non-compliant clinics up to $2000 per instance.

Abortion providers have until July 15 to comply and submit to an inspection of their clinics to assure that they have all documentation in order.  If they wish, they may apply for a one-year allowance to figure out how they will comply and begin to make the mandatory referrals to the approved list of adoption agencies.

Abortion rights advocates are already scurrying to prevent new clinic regulations from going into effect.  Such regulations now require any clinic that performs more than 5 abortions per month to have hallways at least 5 feet wide, areas outside procedure rooms at a minimum of 8 feet wide, as well as regulations on everything from parking spaces to the numbers of toilets available. Clinic owners say the requirements are burdensome, but supporters of the measure say it’s a matter of having abortion clinics up to the same standards as any other medical clinic in the state.

… oh, wait …

There are no abortion clinic requirements to refer people to specific adoption agencies. It’s just that the President of the United States is disregarding the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States in order to force Catholic hospitals, universities, colleges, and charities to pay for contraception (including abortifacient drugs) and sterilization – things that the Church deems mortal sins.

Catholic Organizations Cannot Escape the Mandate

Imagine if Governor McDonnell did enact the regulations requiring adoption referrals. What outrage we’d hear from the very crowd who is currently crowing with delight that Catholics are being denied their religious freedom! After all, the clinic regulations I linked to are the same as required for all outpatient surgical centers in Virginia. (Several articles lie about this, saying that it’s the same as hospitals; this is a misrepresentation of the facts, as these are the regulations for outpatient centers.) What the president is now requiring of Catholic organizations is that they either deny their faith or disobey the government and risk paying fines of thousands of dollars per person no longer covered.

Guess which one we’re picking, sir?

More:

Sign the petition to have the contraceptive mandate rescinded!

Television and the Slippery Slope

There’s been a bit of news since Monday when “Dancing with the Stars” announced that Chastity/Chaz Bono will be a contestant on the show.  She will be dancing with a woman.

I say “she” because that is what God made her: a woman. That she mutilated herself because of her own self-loathing is a sad thing, and something I truly feel sorry for her about.  I cannot – will not – call her a man.  Sorry.

However, this is besides the point I’m going for here.  What I’m interested in more than anything are the parents who are angry about this decision.  They’ve been lodging complains against ABC about the inclusion of Bono on the show.  One comment from a parent (cited at the link above) reads (emphasis in original):

“YOUR choice to bring Chaz Bono into the mix goes too far. I am not about to risk the potential for on screen dialogue about sex changes and gender confusion while my 7 and 9 year old are watching. If you want the “anything goes” hippy culture, then soon that is all you will get. You’ve lost us. In case any of you are wondering … no, we are NOT tolerant. We are not tolerant to allow any and all influences to come unfiltered into our home and especially to our children. This is truly a sad farewell.”

These are the parents I’m curious about.  They’ve been letting their children watch this:

And now they complain about the “anything goes hippy culture”?  Where were their objections to this?

If this has been your family entertainment, where did you think it was going to go from there?

Heck, where did you think it was starting, based on commercials like this?

With costumes like this, who knew it was supposed to be family entertainment?

Link-O-Rama!

It’s Holy Week, and that means I’m busy with Church (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday!) and cleaning up so the Easter Bunny isn’t hiding eggs in the clutter of our downstairs family room.  Oh, and laundry, because no one wants our family to show up au natural for the Easter Vigil.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t excellent things to read!  Just have a gander at some of the super-awesome stuff that some of my favorite bloggers have been putting out while I’m being a total slacker and avoiding washing the kitchen floor again.

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If I hadn’t just been to Confession yesterday, Simcha’s article on sin would’ve inspired me to head over there tonight.  It’s like a smack upside the head.  Here’s a sample:

… Face it:  we are all addicts.  We are all spiritual criminals.  We are all monsters of selfishness.  Our sins are disgusting—all of them, mortal, venial, thought, word, and deed.  Venial sin isn’t trivial or separate from mortal sin:  it is what makes mortal sin possible, bearing it up and supporting it like a rotten ship on an ocean of sewage.  …

Make sure you read the rest!

And Hallie has written some beautiful insights on marriage – and how it’s not always fun.  (Us old married people know this, but it’s a truly difficult lesson to pass on to our kids, what with the normalcy of broken homes.)

…But by the simple, passive act of staying, I learned what wiser and more experienced couples could have told me but which I would have refused to believe until I’d experienced it myself: marriage is not always fun; there aren’t always rewards for your gifts of love; and ultimately profound self-sacrifice is the name of the game. While my younger self, cheeks pinked with the fresh blooms of love, would have been terribly disillusioned by that proposition, over time I came to see that the valleys, rather than being valueless experiences we can only ever grit our teeth through, are gifts. Without these moments of marital aridity we’d never have the opportunity to choose love. …

And how could I possibly have a link-o-rama without Jennifer!? I can’t!  So here’s a bit from her article on how women can rule the world:

… But the most interesting part of it was the emphasis on the sexual behavior of women. Nubel sounds the battle cry, “Ladies, it’s time for a sex strike!” (emphasis mine), and then proceeds to list examples of women effecting change in society through thoughtful abstinence. And thus she reveals her understanding of something that everyone knows but nobody wants to admit: Women hold all the cards when it comes to sex. As a gender, men want sex more than women do, and they are willing to go to great lengths to get it. They’ll change their behavior. They’ll reconsider their ideas. Granted, men aren’t mindless animals who will do anything for sex (well, not most of them, anyway), but the fewer opportunities there are in the culture for intimacy with women, the more willing men are to meet women’s conditions for it. …

Speaking of women, this touching piece at Barefoot and Pregnant gave me a new perspective on how women in crisis are treated – and the things they are told – by our Culture of Death.

Amidst the debates swirling around about defunding Planned Parenthood, some oft-repeated catch phrases are being tossed around like word grenades. One of these are “women in crisis.” I’m sick and tired of hearing about “women in crisis” and how they need access to emergency contraception and abortions. That is a huge, steaming pile of lies, propagated by people who like to murder babies. Women in crisis do not need access to abortions. What they need is love, support, a safe place to live, and people (even strangers!) who will tell them the truth: that they are more than capable of being a mother. That they can do this. That their crisis, no matter how terrible, will be healed in the long, sometimes painful, always joyful process of becoming a mother.
Think this makes me heartless, speaking from my comfortable suburban home, having never known trials in my cushy little life?

Think again.

When I got that positive pregnancy test, the one that changed my life, I was addicted to crystal meth. …

What really struck me, as I read this, was that throughout childhood, our girls are being given contradicting messages.  ”You can do anything!  You’re better than boys!” is given right alongside “You can’t say no to sex!  Have some condoms!”  Girls are being told “You are powerful!” and “Men will respect you more if you sleep around and don’t think sex is a big deal!”  And when sex leads to the thing it’s there for – making a new person – they are told that isn’t what it was really for and that they actually can’t do anything, as long as that baby is around.  Suddenly, it’s all about how incompetent they are.  ”You can’t juggle school and a baby.  You can’t put school off for a baby.  You can’t be a mother now.  You can’t, you can’t, you can’t!”  Suddenly, girls are just weak and pitiful and not well-suited for the very thing that our Creator has actually made us for!  How sad.  How pathetic.  We Pro Lifers really need to be sure we step into this gap here and reassure young women that they can, indeed, be more than another abortion statistic.  And that life is not over if you drop out of school.  And that motherhood is a vocation worth living!

And now for something completely different.  This video might be one of the most perfect combinations ever: Shakespeare crossed with the greatest standup bit to ever be done.  I found this thanks to the great and wonderful Elizabeth Scalia, the Anchoress.

Have a blessed Holy Week, and a most wonderful Easter!  (Don’t forget to celebrate all 50 days of it!)

Running from the Battle Against the Culture of Death

NABRE

The USCCB has come out with a new translation of the New American Bible (NAB), which will be for personal use and will not be replacing the already-in-use translation that is proclaimed during Mass.  Some of the translations, it’s being reported, are more accurate to the original languages, especially in the Old Testament.  But other changes are more a reflection of the times.

An example of the former is the use of “young woman” instead of “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14; I’ve read many times that the more correct translation of the Hebrew “almah.”

But many of the changes that I’ve read about are more in answer to our culture.  ”Holocaust” is being changed to “burnt offering,” which does, indeed, tell what a Holocaust is in the Old Testament.  But the change is being made so as not to confuse people by using a word that has come to mean the systematic killing of Jews during World War II.  ”Cereal” is being changed to “grain” because most Americans think of Cap’n Crunch before they think of barely or wheat.

Honestly, I sometimes wonder at these kinds of attitudes from the bishops.  There were some bishops who were voicing opposition to some of the new Mass translations, saying that the typical person in the pew wouldn’t know what “consubstatial” might mean, among other things.  This might be harsh, and maybe unwarranted, but I think it’s lazy to change the translation to match the (presumed) dumbed-down society rather than teaching us the meaning of things we hear in the readings during Mass.  How hard is it to say, “Holocausts were the burnt offerings made to God; think about this meaning when you next hear about the Holocaust during World War II.  There’s a reason that term was applied to the gas chambers.  There’s a reason we called the mass burnings of Jewish dead in concentration camps a holocaust,”?  How difficult is it for anyone to make the connection that we call breakfast cereals that name because they’re made from grains?  My fourth grader is learning about nutrition and the food pyramid and she’ll likely make the connection on her own.

But the worst substitution, and the one I wish they had left alone, is the elimination of the word “booty,” as in:

Immediately David’s servants and Joab came, after having slain the robbers, with an exceeding great booty: and Abner, was not with David in Hebron, for he had now sent him away, and he was gone in peace. [Douay-Rheims, 2Kings 3:22 - now called 2Samuel]

What the US Bishops have decided to do is replace “booty” with “plunder” or “spoils of war.”  This, to me, is a huge mistake and it throws away an important teaching moment that could have major implications in the battle against the Culture of Death.

How, you might ask, could keeping the word “booty” in the Bible make a difference in that way? Let me tell you how I did battle in my own home against the Culture of Death.

King Saul Attacking David, the Anointed One

I was reading passages about Saul conquering another army to my nine-year-old, while her older sister, who is twelve, sat nearby doing a math page.  I got to the part when God instructs Saul to practice the ban, destroying everything and taking no booty for himself.  This, naturally, led to giggles from my children who, despite our best intentions to shield them from a culture that seeks to destroy their innocence, cannot keep it all out.  They’ve heard friends – and family, even – use the term “booty,” though, gratefully, they have yet to hear someone use the phrase “booty call.”

“Why are you laughing?” I asked, feeling frustrated that I was getting giggles from a Biblical reading about war and obedience to God.

“You said … booty!” squealed my nine-year-old, dissolving into a fit of laughter and dragging her sister into said fit.

I answered her with something I can only say was inspired.  ”Do you know what ‘booty’ really means?”  She stifled her snickering and shook her head.  ”It means something that is taken from someone you conquered.  It means that you conquer someone and then take this thing from them.”  I glanced at my twelve-year-old, making sure she was also listening to this.  I wanted this lesson, which had only sprung into my head – in full – moments before.

“How do you feel about boys talking about girls that way?  That they are things to conquer and take?”

Plunder

Their faces changed gradually as they considered this idea.  Their smiles were gone, replaced by a worried look.  ”That’s not good,” answered my younger daughter.

My older daughter was looking more perturbed about this idea.  ”That’s really bad!” she gasped.

Our lessons about their inherent dignity, that they are precious and not objects to be gawked at or used, have not been in vain.

I wanted to gently lay it to rest, but, at the same moment, wanted to stress it one more time.  ”When someone uses that word – booty – to describe a girl, that’s the meaning behind it.  That she’s a thing, an object, to conquer, to take.  And that’s why we’ve never let you use the word.”

Now, mind you, I’ve always felt uncomfortable about the word; I’ve always felt it was degrading, but couldn’t put my finger on it.  Until that morning, when I suddenly realized – when God helped me see, really – that men have been using a word that dehumanizes women and reduces them to conquests.  I can’t take credit for the whole idea hitting me then.  I’ve prayed unceasingly since our children were born that I’d be able to help them see the beauty of the Church’s teachings on sexuality, especially since I failed so miserably to see them for myself until it was too late for me to make the right choices first (rather than repent and make them after seeing my errors).  I truly believe that my sincere prayers pay off when, at the spur of the moment, I’m called into battle against the Culture of Death.

But now, the Bibles for home use will have the word removed so as to avoid confusion with the hijacked version the Culture of Death has been teaching our children.  And, instead of fighting for us and our children, the bishops seem to be running from it, conceding the point, and turning away from a perfect moment to teach us something about how our society looks at women and girls.

And that’s a shame.