Read for Yourself

(To any woman reading this who's had an abortion, all that we want for you is healing. Please consider going to Rachel's Vineyard if healing is what you need... If you are considering abortion, there is help... The following excerpt, slightly rearranged in paragraph order, is taken from Fr. Frank Pavone's site.)

Some people are tired of the abortion controversy in our nation. Frankly, I often wonder whether it has even begun. Maybe when it becomes more widely known that things like [the below] are legally occurring every day -- maybe then the debate can begin... So many argue about abortion, having never heard a description of what it is...

Abortionist Martin Haskell describes the [common abortion procedure called Dilatation and Evacuation (D&E)]... The following words are from court testimony. Please note that he was testifying as an expert witness about legal activity.

"Let's just say for instance we took a different view, a different tact and we left the leg in the uterus just to dismember it. Well, we'd probably have to dismember it at several different levels because we don't have firm control over it, so we would attack the lower part of the lower extremity first, remove, you know, possibly a foot, then the lower leg at the knee and then finally we get to the hip."

"When the abortion procedure is started we typically know that the fetus is still alive because either we can feel it move ...or... we actually see a heartbeat as we're starting the procedure. It's not unusual at the start of D&E procedures that a limb is acquired first and that that limb is brought through the cervix ...prior to disarticulation and prior to anything having been done that would have caused the fetal demise."

"When you're doing a dismemberment D&E usually the last part to be removed is the skull itself and it's floating free inside the uterine cavity...like a ping-pong ball floating around ... Finally ... a nip is made out of some area of the skull that allows it to start to decompress. And then once that happens typically the skull is brought out in fragments rather than as a unified piece, the result being that sharp bony edges of the skull are exposed" (US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, Case No. 98-C-0305-S).

Find more details about abortion procedures at www.priestsforlife.org/images.

This column an be found online at
www.priestsforlife.org/columns/columns2007/07-05-07readforyourself.htm

Abortion in the Case of Rape or Incest

(To any woman reading this who's had an abortion, all that I want for you is healing. Please consider going to Rachel's Vineyard if you are in need of healing.)

I was thinking about the common objection to abortion limits: "there should at least be an exception in the case of rape or incest".

I believe this is well-intentioned fuzzy thinking. It starts from the heart (good!) and ends in the wrong place (bad!).

Rape is evil. We can all agree on this. Or if you do not prefer the term evil, rape is always wrong.

Incest is evil (or always wrong).

A baby is good. You might object that a baby is not a baby until it is bigger or out of the womb - I'll address that later. For now I hope we can agree that a baby is fundamentally good. Every baby, every person has dignity and should be respected.

So what we have in our scenario is a woman or girl who is raped, possibly by a relative, and this is evil. But from this evil comes a good, a baby.

Now I firmly believe, with the Catholic Church, that the ends never justify the means. So a good end of a baby can never justify the evil of rape or incest.

But we can't turn back the clock. The evil has happened. What we are left with is a choice: what to do about the baby.

The choices are:

• Keep the baby and no doubt in many ways suffer mightily in undue shame and embarrassment, perhaps in poverty, and certainly in a loss of the ideal of a wide open horizon of possibilities.

• Bear the baby to term and place it for adoption, also to suffer undue shame and embarrassment as well as the pain of giving one's own child into another's arms forever.

• Abort the baby and most likely suffer from nightmares, guilt and regret.

In choice number one there is the addition of a good (self sacrifice) to protect a second good (the baby) resulting from an evil (rape or incest) - and because of this choice there is suffering, which is undeserved and painful but can be redemptive because it brings us closer to Jesus and allows to see our need for him as well as how much he loves us. In other words, good + good after evil, with suffering.

In choice number two we find the same "moral math." A good (self sacrifice to place the baby in a loving family) is added to a second good (the baby) resulting from an evil (rape or incest) - and because of this choice there is suffering, which is undeserved and painful but can be redemptive because it brings us closer to Jesus and allows to see our need for him as well as how much he loves us. In other words, good + good after evil, with suffering.

In choice number three an evil (the ending of the baby's life) is added to a good (the conception of the baby) which was brought about by an evil (rape or incest). And this choice also will bring suffering. In other words, evil + good after evil, with suffering.

Are these choices equal? Are we free to choose any one of them? Only inasmuch as we are free to choose any evil. License is the freedom to do anything. True freedom is the freedom to choose between goods. Clearly the first two choices represent more good and less evil than does the third choice. Thus while license would have us choose among all three, true freedom means choosing between numbers one and two.

So why advocate for the third, abortion? Because it is "easier", quicker and looks like the least emotionally painful option. But in the long run it will be the most enduring pain and suffering.

Still, shouldn't women have the choice? Shouldn't they decide for themselves what is right for them?

We can say the same for the baby: shouldn't the baby have a choice? Shouldn't the baby decide for itself what is best for it? It can't, not yet. It has no voice. It is small and weak. But not for long.

But is it actually a baby when it's small, just a "clump of cells"? Ask this of any person who's survived a botched abortion. They too were a clump of cells once. And so were we. No other clump of cells in the universe miraculously turns into a human baby one day. That's because an embryo, even a zygote, is not just a clump of cells. It's a baby's clump of cells. These are very special cells. They will never commit suicide. They will only stop on the path to babyhood if forced to give up on life.

Shouldn't a mother's womb be the safest place on earth for a baby? Even when it's a sacrifice for the mother? Even when she must suffer mightily for her children? Even in the wake of a great evil? Otherwise, isn't the evil compounded? Otherwise, doesn't evil win?

It does not have to be this way. Good can triumph. Heroic good brings light and life to all.

7,000 Unborn Girls Die From Sex-Selection Abortion Daily in India

7,000 Unborn Girls Die From Sex-Selection Abortion Daily in India

By Gudrun Schultz
(http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/dec/06121401.html)

NEW DELHI, India, December 14, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Sex-selective abortion continues to kill almost 7,000 of India’s unborn baby girls every day, an annual United Nations report on children said.

“Nationwide, 7000 fewer girls than expected are born each day, largely due to sex determination,” said the report State of the World’s Children 2007.

“Since 1991, statistics reveal drastic declines in the number of girl children in the most prosperous states and districts--as much as 50-100 fewer girls per 1,000 boys than elsewhere.”

The national average, at 927, is well below the normal worldwide average of 1,050 girls to every 1,000 boys.

In the northern districts of the country, including the Punjab and Haryana states, fewer than 800 girls are born to every 1000 boys. Northern Punjab is one of the worst, with just 798 girls for every 1,000 boys under the age of six, the AFP reported.

Although the Indian government has made it illegal to perform ultrasounds and abortions for the purpose of sex-selection, the practice is widespread and shows no signs of slowing. Wealthier populations are the worst offenders, since they can afford the cost of testing for gender identification.

The cultural preference for boys leads to further neglect of girls who do survive to birth, the UN report said.

“After birth, son-preference continues to persist, leading to the neglect of girls and their lack of access to nutrition, health and maternal care in the critical early years,"

A report from 2005 found a worldwide gender imbalance of at least 200 million more males than females, caused by the abortion of female babies.

In China, the one-child policy has led to the selective murder of millions of Chinese girls in order to satisfy the cultural preference for male children. Official census data for the year 2000 showed a male-female gender gap of almost 17 percent, in some provinces rising as high as 30 percent.

See related LifeSiteNews coverage:

“Gendercide” – Abortion and Infanticide of Girls Leading to Lop-Sided Demographics
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/nov/05112208.html

Wow, Am I Attached

I thought it would be easier. Funny how naturally simple and painless detachment sounds late at night when I'm reading in my warm bed, my belly full, no kids clamoring for my attention, no work to do, no distractions calling my name.

I'm actually finding myself swinging in the other direction, eating more junk food, drinking more caffeine, listening to more music and watching more tv as I try to detach myself from these things. It's as if my spirit is beginning to understand the radical fullness of sacrifice God calls me to - and the things of the world are thus highlighted, standing out in bold relief, looming large before me.

Another possibility is that the enemy sees my pathetic attempts at holiness and wants to smack me down with temptations. I have to be easy on myself and remember that I can't pull myself up by my bootstraps. Only Jesus can. On the other hand, I can't give up the pursuit of holiness. If detachment is the way, I have to keep on. I need to pray hard and pray more.

Holy Spirit, help me to pray.

2 Mental Images for Understanding Detachment

Reflecting on Fr. Dubay's 9 harmful side effects of attachment to created things, I linger on a couple of images. The first is one of not seeing the forest for the trees. This is one way of helping me to understand why God would create everything and pronounce it good, but then want us to detach ourselves from these things.

In this image, God is the forest. We see the trees around us and we see how good and beautiful they are, but we have a sense that if we can only get out of these woods we'll have a better view. It is true. If we come into a clearing, we see at last the woods in full.

The beauty of the trees, the beauty of creation all around us, is a harmony of signposts proclaiming, "Behold: beauty, goodness, elegance. They point to a Designer. Seek Him."

We are surrounded by signs. They all point one way. After gawking at their glory and harmony, we ought to move along and follow the signs.

God is love. We can begin to know love from relationships with those closest to us here on earth. And we can begin to understand that true love has one pure source: Love Himself. We should seek Love by following love - not merely seek love itself.

Returning to this image of the forest, I think once we see the forest from a distance we see there is a mountain beyond. The mountain is beautiful and it beckons us to climb. Climbing to the top, we seek to see all, not just the mountain. Just as we leave the trees to see the forest, we leave the wide view of the mountain before us, from the bottom, to reach the summit and a view of all.

The second image that comes to mind is that of a wallet size photo of a beautiful woman (or if you are a woman, a photo of a gorgeous man). The most beautiful or most gorgeous ever. Beyond compare. Staring at such a photo, we may become transfixed by the wonderful mystery of the person in the photo.

But this is not where we should stop. We should pry our eyes away and get our feet moving in order to seek this person. Just so with God. Beholding the beauty of creation, we must proceed to look away from it in order to seek its author and come face to face with Beauty Himself. We must not cling to the picture but seek the person in the picture. We must not cling to created things but seek God alone.

Detachment - Part 9 ("Drain on Psychic Energy")

"Our mental resources are... limited. This is why the individual who spills himself out in sense stimulations, who is engulfed in the mass media, is never a person of deep prayer. Self-centered desires 'sap the strength needed for perseverance in the practice of virtue,' says John, and 'the more objects there are dividing an appetite, the weaker becomes this appetite for each.'"

Detachment - Part 8 ("Desires Beget Desires")

"Unrest is the omnipresent accompaniment of earthly pursuits, and anyone who has lived a few years into adulthood and is therefore capable of rudimentary reflection on the human situation knows well from experience that nothing fully satisfies. Soon after even peak experiences one begins to feel the inner gnawing emptiness... Because spirit as spirit opens to the infinite, it can be satisfied only in the infinite. All else leaves it incomplete and desiring more... They whet the appetite as crumbs do the famished person."

Detachment - Part 7 ("Blocking Transformation")

"Attachments prevent the final transformation into divine beauty. Until a person is purified of his clingings, he will not be equipped to possess God... Though John can extol the beauty of creation... he insists that in comparison to the divine beauty the 'grace and elegance of creatures [is] quite coarse and crude.' Hence to cling to the latter makes one incapable of the infinite elegance of God. A person attached to the finite is incapable of transformation into the infinite."

Detachment - Part 6 ("Diminishing the Person")

"So marvelous are men and women, says John, that their clinging to anything less diminishes them just as a diamond or a golden vessel is stained by admixture with anything less than itself. The person, therefore, must cling only to God and in this clinging be elevated, ennobled and beautified."

Three Prayers

Prayer for the Spirit of Work

Glorious St. Joseph,
model of all who pass their life in labor,
obtain for me the grace to work in a spirit of penance
to atone for my many sins;
to work conscientiously,
putting the call of duty above my own inclinations;
to work with gratitude and joy,
considering it an honor to use and develop by my labor
the gifts I have received from God;
to work with order, peace, moderation, and patience,
without ever recoiling before weariness or difficulties.
Pray for me that I might, above all, with purity of intention
and with detachment from self,
having always before my eyes the hour of death
and the accounting which I must render
of time lost, talents wasted, good omitted,
and vain complacency in success,
which is so fatal to the work of God.
All for Jesus,
all for Mary,
all after your example,
O Patriarch Joseph!
This shall be my watchword in life and in death.
Amen.


Prayer to Deliver from Doubt

Lord, I have proven to myself, over and over, that I am untrustworthy.
And Lord, You have proven to me, over and over, that You are most trustworthy.
When I walk in Your ways, I see, I hear, I understand, I am washed in Light.
When I wander from You, I stumble, I moan, my soul writhes in darkness.
Jesus, deliver me from doubt.
Give me the grace every moment to fly to Your merciful embrace
Where I wish to remain for always. Amen.



Prayer for Vigilance

If today I am to be tested, O Lord,
Help me to be ready to fight for You,
To die for You,
To lay it all on the line for You. Amen.

Scattershot

Before my laptop died twice this summer, I had a little software app that was good for journaling. I used it mainly to record notes and quotes. Luckily I printed out a copy before the crashing commenced. Following is a selection of these tidbits and gems that I would like to remember:



The world is inclined to worship the trivial and trivialize the sacred.

If you don't know God's story, you don't know your story. Because you are in God's story.

"Life is dour combat, to use the words of the Catechism, and we should wage war against sin like we intend to win." - Father Corapi

Beware the tolerance of evil for the sake of keeping peace.

God gives us a hunger for Him and our hearts are restless until they rest in Him. It's not meaningless. It points to a real need that can and must be met.

The cross of Christ is true love. We must love like this.

In humility, behold mystery.

"Far be it from us to disobey God to obey man." - St. Paul

"Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid." - G.K. Chesterton

"The world offers you comfort but you weren't made for comfort, you were made for greatness and Jesus Christ calls you to greatness." - Pope Benedict XVI, in his first papal address.

"Science is the study of measurable things. Religion is the study of incomprehensible and mysterious things that are revealed." - Father Benedict Groeschel

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting, it's been found difficult and left untried." - G.K. Chesterton

"We are not called to be successful, we are called to be faithful." - Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

God is Love

Praying the rosary today, I was contemplating the fact that God is love. I have often marveled that we know from divine revelation that the Almighty is three persons in one God: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. The blessed Trinity is an eternal exchange of love. A community of love into which we are called to enter.

Today something else occurred to me. Jesus Christ is live-giving love. (By His love and through his love we are saved from death, reborn into new life.) He shows us what it means to give one's self in love: total sacrifice. Christ is the model for this. We must contemplate His sufferings and death in order to learn how to suffer, even die, for others.

Mary is the model for receiving the divine gift of sacrificial life. Her existence is a resounding "Yes" to Jesus. She shows us how to accept the new life that is given to us as well as every pain, suffering and trial that goes with it. She is the model for receiving love. We must contemplate her mothering of the divine child in order to learn how to receive others, their love and their sufferings for us.

Just as we look to Jesus for life, imitating His sacrificial love in a way that can be truly life-giving to others in that it points them to Jesus, we should gaze on Mary for the supreme example of how to be loved. How to accept love from others, humbly, bear it as a woman bears a child in her womb, bring it to term in our hearts and ultimately offer it back to God in thanksgiving.

To crudely summarize, I think love comes in three "gears":

Forward - giving - sacrificial - Christic
Reverse - receiving - humble - Marian
Neutral - abiding

A few pedestrian examples:

Forward - Your spouse has an opportunity to go to a Bible Study. It means you will have to watch the kids instead of going to the gym as you had planned. This small sacrifice helps your spouse do something good and draw closer to God. You have to give something up but if you do it in love, without resisting, you gain peace and joy as you draw closer to Christ.

Reverse - You are throwing a party and you're feeling overwhelmed with all of the preparations. Guests are asking if they can bring anything. You swallow your pride and say yes. They want to help out of love. You let them. Letting go of the image of perfection, you draw closer to the One who is perfect and you enable others to sacrifice in love for you.

Neutral - You go to a party neither spiritually leaning forward, in expectation of helping everyone there, proving you are a good, loving Christian, nor leaning backward, waiting for others to "embrace" you. You abide. Perhaps one moment you will help another and the next another will help you. (By "help" I mean here to offer up an act of love, a sacrifice.) You shift gears as needed.

This is my thinking in a nutshell. The hard part, as always, is moving beyond contemplation and living it out.

Detachment - Part 5 ("Drying Up Joy")

"Contrary to what the world thinks, attachments are killjoys. The worldly man and woman take it for granted that the more they can multiply experiences and accumulate possesions, the more they shall be filled with contentment. They so want to believe this that they will discount a constant stream of evidences to the contrary. Boredom at parties, hangovers after bouts of drinking, heartburn after overeating, aftereffects of drug abuse, emptiness after loveless sexual encounters and failure to find fulfillment in fine fashions or in expensive excursions make it abundantly clear that sense pleasures are not joy. No matter how intense they may be for the moment, they invariably leave in their wake a vacuous disillusionment. Where one does find joy is in the heart and on the lips of those who have generously given up all else to have Christ."

Detachment - Part 4 ("An Affront to God")

"Given that God is endless Beauty and Joy and Love, seeking anything aside from Him and for its own sake is pure nonsense. Preferring something finite to God is an insult to Him. 'He who loves something together with God,' says our Saint, 'undoubtedly makes little of God, for he weighs in the balance with God an object far distant from God'... The principle here is readily seen even on the human level. A husband who prefers his bowling to his wife insults her, and a wife who chooses her own vanity or comfort to her husband's well-being insults him. Immeasurably more demeaning is the preference for a finite frill to purest Love."

Detachment - Part 3 ("Impediments to Prayer and Awareness of God")

"Each of us is sinner enough to know well from experience that a selfish clinging focuses our attention on ourself and draws us away from the divine presence. It prevents us from preferring what is more pleasing to God instead of our own pleasure. Many, perhaps most, of the distractions we suffer in prayer are due to those disordered concerns and desires."

Detachment - Part 2 ("Sinful ramifications")

"One might reflect on how, for example, an attachment to television or to clothing brings about any number of faults, faults that St. John of the Cross enumerates... judging others badly... waste of time... envy... avarice... vanity... fear of what should not be feared... a loss of taste for the Eucharist... forgetfulness of God... gossiping... neglect of work."

In other words, there's a domino effect to sin. Out of curiosity, you just barely nudge that first sin and - watch out - all related sins are toppling fast...

Detachment - Part 1 (Intro and "The dimming of vision")

These days I'm reading Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel - On Prayer, a radically challenging book calling us to truly live out the gospel as did Saints John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila.

Fr. Thomas Dubay tells of how God wants to give us joy and peace beyond imagining. Yet this joy and peace comes only when we are stripped bare, when we are suffering, carrying our cross, dying to ourselves. Once we are emptied, God fills us.

But how can we come to know this joy and peace? Through union with God. Not only in heaven but also on earth. The saints say as much. The Bible and the Catholic Church affirm it.

Union, transforming union, happens in prayer. So I must learn to pray, really pray, even to pray always. To make my life itself a prayer. This is a real challenge for me. I pray the rosary. I pray at meals. I pray at bedtime. But I don't often contemplate. I don't often ask for specific guidance. My prayer life is lacking and I've got to do something about it!

It's uncomfortable seeing the failings of my prayer life thrown into relief by the example of the saints. On the other hand, I don't want to be tempted into comparing myself to "the average" and supposing myself to be doing better.

I must humbly admit that I'm having difficulty trying to detach myself from certain things, especially coffee, coke, sugary and salty foods and second helpings.

That said, here are the pitfalls of a worldly life as enumerated by Fr. Dubay, and a quote or two in counterpoint to each, calling us to detachment:
---------------------------------------------------------------

"The human person is destined to this complete oneness of likeness with God, a oneness effected through total love that transforms the human partner into divine splendor: 'From one glory to another we are transformed into the image that we reflect', as St. Paul puts it (2 Cor 3:18). This union of likeness effected by perfect love can happen only when everything unlike and unconformed to God is cast out, for otherwise the entire image cannot be received into the soul. Therefore, says John, we must become purified of anything ungodly with no admixture of imperfection.



"St. John of the Cross details this basic rationale for detachment with an analysis of the specific harms that selfish clingings, even small inordinate ones, introduce into the soul's pursuit of the Lord... What are these harms?

1. The dimming of vision. "St. John observes that the human intellect is befogged in its natural capacity and in receiving supernatural wisdom when it clings to finite things for their own sakes. So, says John, our unredeemed desires are like a cataract over the eyes, a truth that any experienced spiritual director can verify. People who are singlemindedly and wholeheartedly pursuing God immediately understand the finer points of evangelical perfection, while equally intelligent but worldly men and women simply cannot comprehend an identical explanation. This is one reason why five hundred people listening to a Sunday homily have such diverse reactions to it, ranging from an eager enthusiasm through bland indifference to hostile rejection."

Why so humble?

People often ask me, how do you do it? How do you maintain such a high level of humility?

Well, that's what this blog is all about! Over the course of however many posts I can muster, I will share my many secrets...

Actually, humility is the goal. Adding "most" before "humble" will, I hope, remind me to watch out for that ever-present shadow: spiritual pride. I don't ever want to think, "Hey, I'm getting good at this humility thing!"