No, Not the First

Today, Geraldine Ferraro passed away. Headlines have popped up all over the internet about the death of the “…first female vice presidential candidate”.  The accolades being offered  from both sides of the political aisle, proclaim her greatness as the “first”. Here are two I found interesting:

“She broke one huge barrier and then went on to break many more,” Palin wrote. “May her example of hard work and dedication to America continue to inspire all women.”  – Sarah Palin (Source: Lafayette Journal and Courier)

“She’ll be remembered as a gutsy pioneer who stood up and fought for America to open its door to all Americans, including women.” – Walter Mondale (from cnn.com)

Except, well, she was not the first. She may have been the first on a “major” ticket, but for a over a hundred years before her nomination, women had  been running for President and Vice President of the United States. In 1984, in addition to her barrier-breaking nomination, there were eight other women on the ballot as vice presidential candidates.

It saddens me that the women who ran before are ignored because they were not on a major ticket and it saddens me further that mainstream media and politicians are further perpetuating the myth that Ms. Ferraro was the first. While the importance of her nomination to a major party ticket should not be discounted, it is pure ignorance to say that she was the first woman to be nominated for vice presidential candidate.

To see the many other women who have run for Vice President (and President!!) of the United States, check out Wikipedia.

*This post is in no way an attack on Ms. Ferraro, but a commentary on the blatant ignorance of popular media.*

Filed under: General Stuff, Social Commentary

Tanning

I know the sun is a great source of Vitamin D and according to the Mayo Clinic: “The sun also contributes significantly to the daily production of vitamin D, and as little as 10 minutes of exposure is thought to be enough to prevent deficiencies.” That is just 10 minutes a day, in natural sunlight, outside.

However, I have to ask:

What is up with people tanning? Why, why, why are they putting their health at risk? Do they actually think they look good? Wasn’t there a big deal made out of cancer and tanning in the 80s and that is why we all slather on sunscreen and most beauty products have a sun protection factor?

Also, is it a regional thing? In Georgia people are tanned, but they aren’t orange, they have a natural looking glow. However, Ohio had its fair share of orange people.

Stop the madness, step away from the tanning booth people.

The Darker Side of Tanning

Filed under: Social Commentary

On “Planning” Children**

I am not sure if you all have picked up that we are what some call “providentialists” when it comes to planning our family. That means, we do not, but God does. We do not do anything to avoid pregnancy, but we do not go out of our way to make as many babies as possible either. There has to be a lot of trust in God that He will not give us more than we can handle, but to also know that He will give us the graces, if we accept them, to handle all that he gives us.

This is a lot easier said than done sometimes. As I read in another blog a few weeks back, it is easy to be open to life during the day time, but in the middle of the night it is a pretty scary thought. Yes, I have doubts sometimes, I wonder “What will people say? Will we be able to support another child? Will I be able to endure another first trimester with four little ones? Can I handle another labor?” The answers to those are: “Who cares? Of Course! Yes! Yes!” However, I look outside and see the sun shining and my kids are getting along well. If I were posting this in the middle of the night or they were fighting, I would begrudgingly give the same answers.

It is in those dark times that I seek out wise women who have been in our place and saints who have addressed motherhood but most of all, God because without Him, I am nothing.

With all that being said, I have put together a few links and quotes for my reference and, if you like, yours also. (I have to thank my friend Suzanne for posting a few of these links and inspiring me to write this post.)

“That special power of loving that belongs to a woman is seen most clearly when she becomes a mother…Yet we can destroy this gift of motherhood, especially by the evil of abortion, but also by thinking that other things like jobs or positions are more important than loving, than giving oneself to others. No job, no plans, no possessions, no idea of “freedom” can take the place of love.” ~ Mother Theresa

Five Things That Are Worse Than Being in Debt

The Poverty of Inconvenience

St. Josemaria Escriva

**Yes, I realize this post has the tone that an announcement may soon be made about the expansion of our family, no such announcement is forthcoming as of yet**

Filed under: Church Laws, Quotes, Social Commentary

Fast Much?

From this website comes the gem below.

Thursday, November 25th          Mass on the Grass
Happy Thanksgiving!  Plan to attend this Mass and experience the calm and tranquility before madness begins.  If you have never attended, you must plan to do so this year.  Bring a chair or blanket and a cup of coffee, sit back and enjoy the morning sun, the racing squirrels and the Liturgy of the Word among the oak trees and fresh air.  All are welcome.

I certainly, certainly, certainly hope that this is  just full of typos and they aren’t actually suggesting that I bring my coffee to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass! If so, and if someone from that parish reads this, you might want to pass along this information:

Canon 919
1. One who is to receive the Most Holy Eucharist is to abstain from any food or drink, with the exception only of water and medicine, for at least the period of one hour before Holy Communion.
2. A priest who celebrates the Most Holy Eucharist two or three times on the same day may take something before the second or third celebration even if the period of one hour does not intervene.
3. Those who are advanced in age or who suffer from any infirmity, as well as those who take care of them, can receive the Most Holy Eucharist even if they have taken something during the previous hour.

Source

Filed under: Church Laws, Social Commentary

Save it for the Homily, Father.

Today we went to mass in town. We had a visiting priest who, in addition to celebrating the Mass, was there to tell us about the organization for which he is a chaplain. He introduced himself, after Mass had begun, giving a 3-4 minute talk on what he does and what his organization does.

Does anyone else find this bothersome? It belongs in the homily, not the Introductory Rite, Father. Per the GIRM (The General Instruction of the Roman Missal):

50. When the Entrance chant is concluded, the priest stands at the chair and, together with the whole gathering, makes the Sign of the Cross. Then he signifies the presence of the Lord to the community gathered there by means of the Greeting. By this Greeting and the people’s response, the mystery of the Church gathered together is made manifest.

After the greeting of the people, the priest, the deacon, or a lay minister may very briefly introduce the faithful to the Mass of the day.

The prayers were rushed and we prayed “In Jesus Name” for the Collects, not what was printed in the missalette. When we got to the offertory and preparation of gifts, he held up both the patten and the chalice up at the same time, silently praying the “Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.” and “Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become our spiritual drink.”. Quite a gift, to be able to pray both prayers at the same time! When he washed his hands, he did not say “Lord, wash away my iniquities, cleanse me from my sin.”, he said something including all of us and our “faults”.

Let me quote Father Z here “Say the Black, Do the Red!”.

I am sure that it comes as no surprise that he rushed through the Eucharistic Prayers, using contractions and not allowing any time for Adoration of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Actually, at one point, I pulled out the missalette, to make sure he was not skipping spots.

I was really bothered by the drive thru feeling of the Mass this morning and have spent a good part of the day pondering why. One thought that kept coming to me was: Here is a man, a priest, who spends his life working for an organization that does great things for the poor. He sees suffering day in and day out, suffering that I could never imagine. One would think that in the suffering he sees, he would realize that it is in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Source and Summit of our Faith, that one draws his or her strength to make it through the suffering and celebrate the Mass much more reverently.

I realize that part of my job, as a lay woman in the church, is to pray for our priests and pray that they may become more holy and faithful to our Lord.

Filed under: Social Commentary

If you profess to be Catholic…

If you profess to be Catholic by attending Mass each Sunday, praying the Credo during Mass and receiving Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament then you should darn well be a believer in all Holy Mother Church teaches. This goes tripled for those who are in ministry in a parish (be it DRE, CRE, RCIA Director, the person in charge of the formation of the children in the Parish School of Religion…and so on.)

Many issues, such as an all male priesthood, were settled in the early days of the Church, we do not need to go and reinvent the wheel. If Jesus had wanted women to be priests, He would have done so when He called the 12. If you think about it, who was the one and only person ever to be born without Original Sin? His mother, our mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. If anyone was worthy of priesthood, shouldn’t it be the one who was sinless and did the Will of God her entire life? However, she was not called. While this may not be the most theologically in depth argument, it does hold a lot of water.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church also addresses this issues. If you open your Catechism to number 1577, you will see:

Only a baptized man (vir) validly receives sacred ordination.”66 The Lord Jesus chose men (viri) to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry.67 The college of bishops, with whom the priests are united in the priesthood, makes the college of the twelve an ever-present and ever-active reality until Christ’s return. The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible.68

Of course, this is all meaningless, unless you accept the teachings of Holy Mother Church through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. If that is the case, then why are you even in the position you are in? How can you work for an organization that you do not agree with?


Filed under: Social Commentary

Stem Cells Revisited

A repost from a blog a few years ago:

Okay people. Let’s go over this again. No matter what YOU want to believe, life begins at CONCEPTION. Yes. When that little bitty egg is fertilized by that even littler sperm, a life is CREATED. And no, this isn’t wacko Catholic-Girl coming at you, this is scientific proof. When an egg is fertilized, a seperate DNA is created right then and there, got it? When there is human DNA, different from the Mother and the Father, LIFE BEGINS.

So, please tell me how creating a life, just to take it from its mother’s womb for the sake of “advancing” human life is a good thing. Research has yet to show embryonic stem cells healing a person. YET, with ADULT STEM CELLS, there is hope and actual cases of healing.

http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics3.asp

This link talks about embryonic stem cells. I direct you to the last paragraph
where it states:

If scientists can reliably direct the differentiation of embryonic stem cells into specific cell types, they may be able to use the resulting, differentiated cells to treat certain diseases at some point in the future.

You know what this means? That they HAVE NOT been able to use them for the so called greater good!

I now direct your attention to this link:

http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics4.asp

Please note the second paragraph, where it states:

Research on adult stem cells has recently generated a great deal of excitement. Scientists have found adult stem cells in many more tissues than they once thought possible.

I then direct you further to this link:

http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS04J01

The link above no longer works, check this one out for more info: http://www.physiciansforlife.org/content/view/690/38/

This article shows cases in which ADULT STEM CELLS were used to heal spinal cord injuries, heart regeneration, corneal regeneration and so on. Pay close attention to the heart regeneration section, in particular to this paragraph:

The capability of adult stem cells to regenerate a damaged and malfunctioning heart was clearly seen in the case of Dmitri Bonnville. A 16-year-old from Almont, Michigan, he was accidentally shot in the chest by a nail gun while conducting house work on February 1, 2003. The injury was exacerbated by cardiac arrest a few days later.

His family examined the available effective treatment options. Physicians informed the parents of the possibility of a heart transplant or the use of extended medication while noting the risks and failures of such procedures. The doctors also notified the parents of a procedure that involved stem cell extraction from Bonnville’s own body and subsequent transplantation into his heart. Predicting success, they determined to go forward with the surgery under the direction of Dr. Cindy Grines, Dr. William O’Neill and Dr. Steven Timmis at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan. The treatment had never been conducted on a human patient in the United States prior to this occasion. Within a week of the February 21 surgery, Bonnville’s heart pumping capacity had increased from its previous 25 percent to 35 percent.

I guess my question now is, why should we create then destroy innocent lives when we have the real option to use adult stem cells?

Filed under: General Stuff, Social Commentary

From the cnn.com article http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/01/22/virginity.value/index.html

“A recent study in the journal Pediatrics showed that religious teens who take virginity pledges are as likely to have sex before marriage as their religious peers, and less likely to use condoms or birth control when they become sexually active.”

In an early blog post, I mentioned that we tell kids the reasons to wait for marriage then send them out into an oversexed world. Of course, it doesn’t help that often times youth put themselves in to a position where they “get on the bus” and there aren’t any stops between the bus stop and “the end of the line” (being sex). And that bus stop is  fine line. A young man or woman may have all the plans in the world to wait but putting on the breaks once the bus starts moving can be very hard.

I also think the quote from the article above seems to be making religous people look like freaks. Pleanty of people say “no” and plan to wait who have no religious affiliation. I have helped out with a friend who did an after school program to teach abstinence and they were asked to sign a pledge to wait. This program did not have a religious affiliation. As a matter of fact, when working with the group, my friend was not able to talk about God at all, due to the source of her funding.

To keep kids from engaging in sex once they made a pledge to wait, we need to teach them how to stay off the bus.

Filed under: Modesty, Social CommentaryTagged with: ,

abstinence-only sex education = Failure?

Today I read that critics of abstinence-only sex education will be asking the soon to be President Obama to cut off federal funding of abstinence education programs. Of course this charge is being led by Cecile Richardson, the head or Planned Parenthood.

Oh and of course abstinence education is going to be a failure in our over-sexed society if we don’t give the kids tools to succeed. We can sit in a classroom with 12-18 year olds and telling them the disadvantages of pre-marital sex. They can hear about sexually transmitted diseases, unplanned pregnancies, emotional let downs then make the promise to wait until marriage. Then we send them out into the world full of beer ads, lingerie ads, internet, popular music, prime time television (complete with teenage soaps that are nothing more then bed hopping shows) and so on.

This doesn’t sound like a good set up for sucess does it?

Filed under: Social Commentary