Confessions of a Cooperator

Stories from the Sidewalk -- Or Not!

2012-01-06T17:50:00.000-05:00

Stories from the Sidewalk

Today's story doesn't come from the sidewalk, but from last night's screening of Fr. Robert Barron's CATHOLICISM series at Holy Family. We watched episode #5, Peter and Paul. Fr. Barron spoke of how Christ's gospel was confrontational when he preached it two thousand years ago. Saints Peter and Paul recognized that what they were preaching would offend the ears of many in the world of the Roman empire. They expected to be martyred for their witness to the gospel. It is still confrontational today, Father Barron insists, unless we water it down to make a kind of easy-going gospel that moves along comfortably in the stream of "the world".

In the faith-sharing session afterwards, a friend and fellow parishioner spoke of how she often wondered if she would have the courage to stand up for the gospel in a culture and situation where witnessing could be dangerous.

"Could I," she wondered, "Stand up to the Nazis if I had lived during the time of all that killing and injustice? I like to think that I would have, but I wonder."

Have you ever wondered that about yourself?

I challenge you, if you have never taken a public stand against the killing of the unborn, to ask yourself why you have not. Thousands of innocent lives are taken every week in Planned Parenthoods and other abortion clinics across the country. We who live in the culture spawned by the injustice of Roe v Wade occupy a position similar to that of the German people who lived in the culture of the Third Reich. We know that abortionists legally kill unborn children by the thousands, the millions, every year. We know that the killings are justified under benign names like "reproductive rights" or "a woman's choice". We know that our nation's heart and soul are being coarsened -- and its conscience deadened -- by decades of our complacence in turning our heads at the deep wounds inflicted on women, families, surviving siblings, abortionists and their staff, and all who participate in this injustice.

Is that complacence a form of complicity? Can silence indicate agreement?

What kinds of weeds might be being sowed to serve as obstacles to hearing the Lord's call to stand against this contemporary Slaughter of the Innocents? Do we worry that people will think we are one of those "pro-life nut jobs" if we come out to pray one day at Planned Parenthood? Do we think we will offend our more sophisticated friends if we stand with and pray for the unborn as they live out the final hour of their short life? Do we secretly agree with our pro-choice friends, and think that some of these cases are so pitiful that death is the best solution for an unplanned pregnancy?

Let's ask ourselves this, and pray about it. I took two weeks "vacation" from sidewalk ministry during the Christmas season. I did not want to face the contradictions of the joy of the season and the sorrow of the lives being taken-- and the sorrow of the Rachels mourning for their children, even when they themselves were cause of that mourning. I had to pray long and hard to prepare myself to come back to the sidewalk. It is not easy duty, but it is powerfully revelatory of the Lord's real and immediate presence in our hurting world. Every time we go, the Lord provides evidence of His presence and love. Every time.

This week, on both Friday and Saturday, public and prayerful witness will take place for the sake of the unborn lives that are at risk and being killed in Wilmington's Planned Parenthood, 625 Shipley St.

Friday's vigil, with 40 Days for Life under Delaware Right to Life, will take place from 8:30-11:30 am.

Saturday's vigil, with the Knights of Columbus, will take place from 7:30-10:30 am.
I hope to see some new faces this year. Why not let 2012 be the year you step out onto the sidewalk to pray and vigil for the unborn? The more the Delaware community sees that ordinary folks are praying, not protesting, the more likely they are to realize that for as long as the injustice perpetrated by Roe v Wade continues, praying at abortion clinics is a normal Christian ministry and witness to the gospel.

Kurt Linnemann Found Not Guilty of Baseless Charges

2011-11-12T04:44:00.001-05:00

Pro-Life Witness Found Not Guilty of Baseless Charges

Wilmington, DE, November 12, 2011. On November 10,2011 pro-life sidewalk counselor Kurt Linnemann was exonerated of the charge ofcausing a public disturbance by making a false 911 call outside the PlannedParenthood of Delaware abortion clinic at 7^th and Shipley Sts in Wilmington. The prosecution tried to paint peacefulpro-life vigilers as dangerous disrupters of social order. Instead, thismisdemeanor trial, which ran for three hours in the New Castle County Court ofCommon Pleas wasting taxpayer money, completely vindicated long-time pro-lifeactivist Linnemann. The case painted a picture for the public of the peacefuldemeanor and non-threatening deportment of the ordinary men, women and childrenwho gather regularly to witness to the value of unborn human life and to offerwomen alternatives to abortion.

Kurt chose to be tried by a judge, not by a jury. Both sidespresented their case, and the judge rendered his verdict.

The Case.

On Friday, June 10, Kurt Linnemann, Sean Kovalevich, andSusan Andrews arrived early at Planned Parenthood for the pro-life vigil thattakes place each Friday morning (surgical abortion day). They noticed a boxsitting in front of Planned Parenthood’s door. They had never seen a box beforein that position – deliveries are always received during the day. Was the boxdangerous? They discussed the matter anddecided that since there is heightened alert these days, they should notify thepolice and let them decide. They could not step on to Planned Parenthoodproperty themselves. Kurt made the phone call to 911.

Upon arrival, the police cordoned off the area, examined thebox and found it empty. Planned Parenthood told the police that they had notmade the phone call, as officers believed, but that the call had come from Kurtand Sean -- known to them as “regulars”. The police swiftly put Kurt and Sean inhandcuffs and took them away. Later,they released Sean but arrested Kurt and charged him with making a false911 call.

The state presented a very weak case. The police report stated that Lori Magno,a Planned Parenthood employee, told the arresting officer that Kurt had seenher come out of the building, examine the box, and go back inside. Since Kurthad witnessed her doing this, the report reasoned, he knew that the box washarmless. He had concocted the 911 story to disrupt business on an abortionday.

The state showed the surveillance video for that morning. The video showed Ms.Magno examining the box at 7:09, long before Kurt pulled up in his van at 7:16.The video showed clearly that the police report was wrong – Kurt could notpossibly have seen Ms. Magno examine the box.

Upon questioning, Ms. Magno denied that she had made the statement attributedto her in the police report. Upon questioning, the police officer stated thathe had written his report the day of the arrest, and that if he had writtenthat Ms. Magno had said this to him, he must have believed it to be true, butin the confusion, who knows if he made an error in what he thought she hadsaid.

The state then played the audio of the 911 call. We all heard a very calmKurt say that there was a strange box outside PP and that it might be nothingbut they might want to take a look at it just to make sure. He identifiedhimself, spelled his name, described the box, all the time maintaining a calmvoice, not once urging them to get down there, or asking that the building beevacuated. He simply reported that someone might want to take a look at it.

After the state presented their case, Kurt's lawyer asked for a dismissal ofcharges. He noted that the case had originally been built on the arrestingofficer's report of Kurt's knowledge that the box was harmless, but that thevideo clearly showed Kurt was not on the scene to see Ms. Magno examine thebox. The video from the previous night, played earlier to both counsels, clearlyshowed the box blowing up onto the property by the wind, thereby dismissing thesuspicion voiced by police on the day of the arrest that Kurt had planted thebox on purpose.

The judge did not agree to the dismissal, saying that the errors in the policereport did not matter. He still had some questions in his mind as to why Kurthad made the call. If he arrived at 7:16, why did he not make the call until7:33 if he thought the box suspicious? He wanted to hear Kurt's witnesses.

Ms. Andrews and Mr. Kovalevich, who had been sequestered and not seen thevideo, then testified. Their testimony agreed with Kurt's. The reason for thelapse in time of 16 minutes was because Kurt and Sean first greeted each otherand kibbitzed in friendly conversation, before Kurt noticed the box. They thendiscussed it -- did it seem odd or suspicious? They were still uncertain, andwhen Susan arrived with three children, they asked her if she thought the boxseemed out of place and odd. Susan agreed it was an anomaly, and although itwas probably nothing, it was best to be safe. Susan and the children backedaway from the front of the building. Kurt made the call.

The prosecutor tried hard to make the case that Kurt called 911 in order to evacuatethe building and cause a disruption. She spoke more than once of how the phonecall was all part of Kurt’s “agenda”. The judge questioned her as to whatexactly the evidence showed of Kurt’s agenda. She admitted that the evidenceshowed that his agenda was to offer options counseling to women going in forabortions, and apologized if the state had suggested otherwise. The judge askedthe prosecutor why, if Kurt’s intention was to disrupt business, he had madethe phone call a half hour before the business even opened. “Was he just incompetent?, the judge asked.

The judge ruled in favor of Kurt: Not Guilty. He saw no evidence that Kurt haddone anything other than be particularly vigilant about a suspicious lookingbox at an abortion clinic, knowing that (as Kurt himself testified) some peopledid bomb abortion clinics. The judge made reference to how unfortunately welive at a time where not only do terrorists threaten, but also some protesters"who are not as responsible" as Kurt, Sean and Susan, behave badly.

Analysis.

Of course, it's great that Kurt was exonerated. Tothis writer, the most troubling aspect of the trial was how much money thestate spent on an essentially trivial matter, how willing the judge was to viewthe pro-lifers suspiciously but discount the contradictions in the policereport and the Planned Parenthood testimony.

On the other hand, the judge was obviously impressed by the demeanor and testimonyof our three witnesses. They testified clearly and with no hesitation. The 911call was innocuous. The video tape revealed a bunch of people setting up signsand talking to each other. The judge saw clearly that there was no case, nointent to disrupt, just ordinary people going about their business whenconfronted by an anomaly.

However, in his closing statements he praised the Wilmington Police Dept., hepraised the Planned Parenthood folks, and he showed that he thought they showedremarkable efficiency. He did not think they had done anything wrong inarresting Kurt, he dismissed the discrepancies between the video and the policereport by saying "we're all human, we make mistakes", and heobviously thought that although the state had a weak case, their point of viewwas understandable.

Even though most of you reading this believe that abortion is an injustice,many of you would never come to an abortion clinic to pray and vigil. I suspectthat many of you too have some of the same ideas that the judge had -- that“abortion protestors" are a threat.

I would like you to re-think your prejudices against sidewalk vigiling, inlight of this trial. Kurt was brought to trial not because of his actions, butbecause of a prejudice against pro-life witness and a pre-disposition tobelieve that pro-lifers are extremists.

The culture at large still views pro-life witness as a radical politicalactivity. But this is not what we doeach Friday at Planned Parenthood. We pray. We counsel. We offer literature.And people in the community respond. They can see that we care about thecommunity itself, about the men and women of Wilmington and not just the babies who are atrisk. The unborn need the protection of the law. We fight for this in thepolitical arena -- elect officials who will extend protection of the law toevery human being, born and unborn, healthy and ill, young and old.

But on Fridays at Planned Parenthood, we witness to the value of the livesof the unborn children being killed that day, we pray for them and for theirparents, we pray for the abortionist and the PP staff, we offer resources, wetalk to clients, we sometimes take them to A Door of Hope or Birthright forreal health care for both mother and baby.

And even Kurt's judge - pre-disposed to view the state's case in the mostbenign light -- saw clearly that we do not engage in disruption. We're justordinary folks trying to convey an ordinary Christian thought --- that allhuman lives are valuable.

40 Days for Life Fall 2011 comes to an end: Stories from the Sidewalk + more

2011-11-03T06:38:00.000-04:00

Stories from the Sidewalk

Dear Friends,

We had a few days of bitter cold this Fall during 40 Days for Life. Putting the best spin on it, we decided that the Holy Spirit could blow powerfully even when the temperatures drop. So those fierce winds did not deter the prayer we offered. Who knows, they might've spurred us to more fervor, if only to warm ourselves by proximity to Christ's own fiery Heart. We prayed and offered information and kind words to the young women who sought relief from the burden of a crisis pregnancy by choosing to destroy rather than nurture the growing lives within. We know that the promised relief is temporary, that abortion as a solution to problems is an illusion. Without real hope and support in their lives, without real love, the burden will not lift for those who are ensnared in our bleak culture of death.

Pray for the mothers who have aborted their children during these 40 days of vigil. Pray that they receive the graces they need to turn towards life. Pray that the Lord take the souls of the innocent, unwanted and unborn children to Himself, that they are consoled in His love for their aborted experience of life and love on this earth.

We've heard many stories during these 40 Days of prayer and vigil. Just this week, we heard a father justify the killing of his unborn child inside Planned Parenthood: "I'm a Christian too, I go to church three times a week, I'm on the parish board of my Greek Orthodox church. I'm 58 years old, I can't be a father. My pastor told me it was my choice to make. I go to church three times a week. I've researched it all on the Internet, it's not a human being yet. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I don't need your information. I'm a member of my parish board. I go to church three times a week."

Three times he felt he needed to repeat his church affiliation. We wonder.... why so many times?

We were praying the rosary, meditating on the mysteries of Christ's Passion, when we were approached by a young woman and her best friend. "I saw you from over there and thought I just needed to talk to you. You're against abortion, right? You don't think it's a good idea, right? I'm pregnant and everybody says I should abort my baby, but I don't want to. The economy is so bad and all. Could I have one of those rosaries? Could my friend? Could you pray with us?" She did not know about Bayard House, or A Door of Hope and Birthright, or Mom's House. We were able to tell her about so many resources that she did not know about. She stopped by two days later, all smiles. She knew what she wanted, and she thought that with her friend's help she would be able to make it. She was just looking for somebody to encourage her in what she knew she wanted to do.

Come Pray With Us This Friday and/or Saturday!

Two days from now, November 4, is the last Friday of this fall's 40 Days campaign. It is also a First Friday. The following day, November 5, is the final Saturday of our campaign. Friday is surgical abortion day at Planned Parenthood. Saturday is "overflow" surgical abortion day, if they get too many clients on Friday.

Come join us on Friday and/or on Saturday. The Knights of Columbus will be there also on Saturday. Let's make a prayerful end of this 40 Days campaign.

Final Benediction at St. Patrick's in Wilmington on Sunday, November 6 at 4:00 pm.

Father Leonard Klein will offer a final benediction on Sunday, November 6 at 4:00 pm at St. Patrick's Church, Fifteenth and King Streets, Wilmington, DE 19801.

40 Days for Life is looking for a non-Catholic to join our coordinating group. Could it be you? Think and pray about it!

40 Days for Life began in a small, evangelical Christian community in Texas. One of the ironies of life is that since it has spread throughout the nation and the world, it is Catholics who tend to come on board in leadership positions. 40 Days for Life Wilmington would like to have a non-Catholic sister or brother join our coordinating team. This is a wonderful opportunity for ecumenical fellowship, as well as a chance to get together with like-minded Christians in service to the Lord. If you feel called, email me at rstabosz@gmail.com or go to www.40daysforlife.com/wilmington and contact any of the five coordinators listed on our home page.

Blessings on you all!

Rae Stabosz

Catholicism has Goodness and Truth covered pretty well these days, but where's the Beauty?

2011-10-23T07:26:00.001-04:00

Jennifer Fulwiler has good article on why Catholic/Christian art is not dominant these days. It doesn't break new ground -- it re-iterates what Debra Murphy, Barbara Nicolosi, Anne Lewis etc. in the Catholic arts community have been discussing for years. But the article is worthwhile and comboxes have some nice contributions, e.g.:
"Bad art is easier than good art. I used to teach a poetry textbook to highschoolers that had a great chapter called “Good Poetry and Bad” that paired great poems with sentimental jingles on the same themes, then asked study questions to help the student see which was better and why. The better students saw the difference, but there was always a large contingent of the class that solidly and immoveably preferred the cheesy sentimental jingles. So I think we need better art education if we’re to have anyone capable of appreciating the new works you want commissioned."

I titled this article, Catholicism has Goodness and Truth covered pretty well these days, but where's the Beauty? The cynical may well remind me of the scandals and the cover-ups, the squabbling and the bitter internal battles, and wonder how much Goodness the Church has these days. Yes, well... The sinful, like the poor, we have with us always. But is there any group that devotes more of its time, treasure and talent towards ameliorating the suffering of the poor, the marginalized, the disenfranchised, the wounded and the broken? AA is the only org I know that comes close, and it has time and talent covered but doesn't even have monetary sharing as goal.

PIGMENTLEFT: RAW SHOW

2011-10-16T16:37:00.001-04:00

Hey Folks,

The D'Orazio family lives on in another generation!

Take a look at my niece Melissa's first art show in Phoenix, Arizona. She's just bursting with talent! This link shows only one pic from her display, so go down the blog and look at her other stuff.

PIGMENTLEFT: RAW SHOW

Susan G Komen for the Cure & Planned Parenthood -- the Pink Link

2011-10-14T08:16:00.000-04:00

My guest blogger today is Nicole Collins, President of Delaware Right to Life. Are you pro-life and thinking of giving to Susan G Komen for the Cure? Think again!

Every October, the nation turns pink. Friends and neighbors wear pink ribbons, NFL players wear pink shoes. Even the White House reflects pink flood lights onto its exterior in honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

We in the Catholic community also know October as Respect Life Month. It seems these two life-saving efforts should go hand-in-hand right? Not so fast.

In general, the color pink raises awareness for breast cancer – a worthy cause. But the biggest beneficiary of pink-related events is Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the nation’s largest breast cancer charity. Some of you might even support Komen in your charitable giving. And why not? Breast cancer is a tragic disease that far too many women battle every year in the U.S. It’s a worthy cause to support. Unfortunately, just not through Komen.

Why “unfortunately?” Komen financially supports the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood (PP). How can that be? Why would a life-affirming organization like Komen financially support a death-peddling organization like PP? Komen refutes the claim that they directly support abortion, but let me give you the details.

According to the Bioethics Defense Fund (bdfund.org) Komen has a policy of explicitly allowing its state affiliates to give monetary grants to abortion providing facilities. Not all state affiliates give grants to PP using the 75% of the funds that they raise in a state. However, each state affiliate must forward at least 25% of funds raised in their state to the Komen National office. These funds are under the discretion of a board that refuses to disassociate itself from PP, thus the money goes into a pool to be potentially distributed to PP.

Komen gave over $3 million to PP between 2003 and 2008 (though the amount is insignificant). So why does Komen give funds to an abortion giant? They claim they give the money as grants for breast exams. There are two problems with this claim. Number 1: It doesn’t matter what you give money to PP for. The dollars are fungible and it just frees up money for them to use on abortions and other operating costs to keep their doors open. Number 2: PP is a level 1 breast center. It is only allowed to perform manual exams. Despite its implications - it DOES NOT PROVIDE MAMMOGRAMS!

Desperate following the House of Representatives’ recent vote to defund the organization, PP CEO Cecile Richards used the claim that the organization should continue to receive federal funding based on their breast health services. “If this bill ever becomes law, millions of women in this country are going to lose their health care access, not to abortion services, to basic family planning – you know, mammograms, cancer screenings, cervical cancer,” she said.

But the truth is that PP does NOT provide breast exams. They simply provide referrals for breast exams – the same type of referral you can get from your primary care doctor, urgent care center, free clinic or GYN.

Pro-life blogger Jill Stanek did some research and found that not a single PP in America performs mammograms. PP’s own website says, “Ask your local health care provider, health department, or staff at your local Planned Parenthood center about where you can get a mammogram in your area.” [emphasis mine]

Aside from the fact that PP does not provide mammograms, Komen continues to ignore the ominous fact that abortion is the #1 avoidable cause of the very disease they’re fighting. It doesn’t make sense that they’re financially abetting an organization that contributes to the tragic rise in breast cancer.

From the Abortion/Breast Cancer Coalition (abortionbreastcancer.com):

“The breasts grow considerably during pregnancy while under the influence of high levels of the hormone estrogen, a known carcinogen. Estrogen causes the woman's normal and cancer-vulnerable breast lobules to multiply. If she has an abortion, she's left with more places for cancers to start in her breasts. If she has a baby, then other pregnancy hormones mature her breast lobules into cancer-resistant lobules during the last months of pregnancy. She's left with more cancer-resistant tissue than she had before she became pregnant.”

It’s heartbreaking that an otherwise very worthy organization could negate all of the good work that they do by funding an organization that exterminates 332,278 unborn children per year. And this is a fact that, as Christians, we cannot ignore. We cannot overlook the evil that is perpetuated through this partnership by using the false justification that we’re doing a “greater good” by funding breast cancer research. In this situation, there is no greater good. The ends do not justify the means. The murder of over 300,000 innocents does not justify a few mammogram referrals.

Fortunately there are alternative organizations that do beneficial work for the same cause through morally acceptable means. If you’re currently a Komen supporter and would like to divert your funds to an ethical breast cancer research organization, please consider the National Breast Cancer Foundation (nationalbreastcancer.org) and the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute (bcpinstitute.org).

Also, please keep in mind that Susan G. Komen for the Cure is far from the only disease-research organization that funds morally objectionable groups. Many well-known disease advocate groups support Planned Parenthood as well as embryonic stem cell research. Just to name a few: The American Cancer Society (including Relay for Life), Alzheimer’s Association, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association and American Lung Association. For a comprehensive list of organizations, their positions on life issues, and alternative options, please visit www.all.org/charities

--Nicole Collins, President of Delaware Right to Life

2011-10-05T06:01:00.001-04:00

Guest Blogger today: Shawn Carney, from 40 Days for Life National.

Shawn will be speaking at the Delaware Right to Life annual banquet, next Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 at 5:00pm at The Sheraton Dover Hotel, 1570 N. DuPont Highway, Dover, DE 1990. Musical Artist~ Caitlin Jane, Guest Appearance by Maria Cahill ~Miss Delaware 2011~

If you would like to RSVP to this event, please contact Eunice Tate at Eunice@derighttolife.org or 302-526-2732

DAY 8: Darkness

October 4th, 2011 by admin

There is such incredible darkness at the places where abortions are done.

In thinking about that darkness, I am reminded of something Abby Johnson said. Abby was the director of the Planned Parenthood abortion center in Bryan/College Station, Texas who quit her job two years ago and is now sharing the pro-life message.

Abby recently wrote about some of the things she saw while working in the abortion industry. She mentioned how cold the staff was … and said they even joked about sending a welcome gift when the Coalition for Life, the local pro-life group I worked with, moved next door to Planned Parenthood.

They wanted to send us cookies shaped like babies.

And that was one of the milder examples of what passed for humor behind the walls of an abortion facility.

I’m hearing from 40 Days for Life coordinators, who are telling of the darnkess they encounter at the abortion centers. Here are some of their reports.

——————————————————-

TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA

——————————————————-

As the abortion center closed for the day, one of the employees came out and threw eight small plastic babies on the ground.
“I don’t know how long you people plan to be here,” said the worker, “but this is how many we did today.”

“Our group remained silent,” said Ryan in Tuscaloosa. “We watched the staff member leave, and prayed for the eight babies and the staff.”

The local team decided it would be best to distribute the plastic babies to vigil participants to carry as a reminder to pray for all the unborn, especially the eight from this particular day.

To Father Frank Pavone: please stop and be silent!

2011-09-20T08:03:00.001-04:00

This morning I received another request for money from Priests for Life. This was my reply:

Dear Father Pavone,

I have always supported you and Priests for Life.

But I have to say that now, in light of the difficulty between you and Bishop Zurek, I think you should give it a rest for awhile. Stop asking for money and support. Stop speaking and defending yourself in the court of human opinion. Just stop. Take some time away from the battle. Rest and re-create.

Give the Holy Spirit a chance to work. Sometimes silence is best.

The more urgent pleas I receive from Priests for Life, the more I feel uneasy. The fight against abortion requires financial support, yes. But even more, it requires unity among the faithful. And I find it unseemly that you continue to ask for "the largest gift you can possibly make".

Truthfully, I found it unseemly before this latest business in Amarillo. I don't like to be asked constantly for money in the most urgent ways. It smacks of the psychology of fundraising, and I don't like to be manipulated.

Rae Stabosz, regional co-coordinator, 40 Days for Life - Wilmington, DE

This Saturday -- Fundraiser for 40 Days for Life Wilmington DE

2011-09-07T13:34:00.000-04:00

This Saturday evening, September 10, 40 Days for Life Wilmington is having a spaghetti dinner fundraiser followed by a showing of the one-hour documentary, Unplanned: The True Story of Abby Johnson. If you haven't made reservations, contact us.

Can’t make it? Want to help?

You can make a tax-exempt donation:

40 Days for Life Wilmington is an all-volunteer effort. Every cent goes for expenses to educate folks about the reality of abortion in Delaware, and to run two campaigns a year. This includes production and distribution of pro-life brochures, billboards, prayer booklets, signs, and advertisements.

Holy Family Newark to host Delaware premiere of "The Catholicism Project"

2011-08-08T13:44:00.005-04:00

Preview Screening In Delaware
Of Fr. Robert Barron’s Highly-Anticipated Catholicism Documentary

Holy Family Catholic Church is pleased to announce a screening of the first episode of Fr. Robert Barron’s upcoming ten-part Catholicism documentary, called “the best-ever film about the Catholic faith” by the scholarly website The Catholic Thing.

When: Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 7:00 p.m
Where: The Holy Family Parish Hall, Holy Family Church, 15 Gender Road, Newark, Delaware.
Admission: Free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served. A freewill offering will be taken to benefit Fr. Barron’s Word on Fire ministry.
To register: E-mail to rgarland@holyfamilynewark.org or telephone the Holy Family Religious Education Center at 368-8976.

In Amazed and Afraid: The Revelation of God Become Man, “the strange and dangerous words of Jesus of Nazareth set up a drama that will culminate in a surprising battle between two kings, and in the wake of this conflict, an empire will be defeated – and the world will be changed.”

Catholicism is a groundbreaking documentary written and hosted by Fr. Barron, who is a priest of the archdiocese of Chicago, professor of theology at Mundelein Seminary, and the creator of more than 100 popular You Tube videos on faith and culture. The series is highly anticipated in Catholic media circles. George Weigel, the biographer of Pope John Paul II, calls Catholicism “the most exciting media project in the history of the Church in the United States.”

Praise for Fr. Barron’s engaging and effective style comes from New York Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, who says the professor of theology is able to deliver the message of Catholicism with the same “eloquence and pizazz and conviction” as Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, who brought the Catholic faith into American living rooms in the 1950’s and 1960’s in a top-rated television program.

“We’re very happy to host Delaware’s first Catholicism preview screening, says Sr. Carol Heffner, Holy Family Director of Religious Education. “This beautifully made documentary showcases the artistic and architectural splendor of the Catholic faith from around the world.”

The television premiere of Catholicism will be on September 29 in the Washington D.C. viewing area, when public TV station WETA will broadcast two episodes.

In addition to television enjoyment Catholicism can be used in religious education programs, using companion study lessons for each episode. “One of the reasons we are hosting this screening is to review Catholicism for inclusion into our adult faith formation curriculum,” says Sr. Carol. “We’re also inviting all of the diocese’s Directors of Religious Education to come and see if the series would be a useful catechesis tool for their parish.

The ten-part series was filmed on location in 15 countries using high-definition photography. In this sweeping documentary, Father Barron tells the story of Catholicism around the world – using art, architecture, literature, music and all the riches of the Catholic tradition. The production crew traveled to some of the most magnificent and sacred sites in Jerusalem, Rome, Krakow, Warsaw, New York, Istanbul, Ephesus, Lourdes, Mexico City, Athens, Corinth, Mexico City, Uganda, Manila, Sao Paolo, Auschwitz, Kolkata, Philadelphia, Chicago, and beyond.

Filming Catholicism was a life-changing experience for executive producer Mike Leonard, a veteran NBC Today Show correspondent and former parishioner of Fr. Barron. “This series changed the way I think and act. The global settings were stunning, but it was Fr. Barron’s brilliant insights on life’s most challenging issues that shook me to the core,” says Mr. Leonard.

The film team was granted exclusive access to film privately in many locations inaccessible to the general public. Highlights include some of the world’s architectural and artistic masterpieces and most sacred places: The Dome of The Rock, the Hagia Sophia, the tomb of Mother Teresa, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, rare views of the Pantheon, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel and the Pope’s private gardens, Chartres, Notre Dame, and Cologne Cathedrals, as well as one of the largest religious celebrations on the planet – the feast of the Ugandan martyrs.

For further information:
Sr. Carol Heffner, Director of Religious Education
Holy Family Catholic Church
15 Gender Road
Newark, DE 19713
302-368-8976

My Dinner with Ellen: Old Tioga Farm

2011-07-05T07:56:00.007-04:00

This weekend, my Pious Ladies friend Ellen Lafferty and I made our ... dare I say it?... pilgrimage to Old Tioga Farm for a dining experience that was a feast for the senses and a solace to modern souls susceptible to exhaustion by the frenetic pace and over-stimulation of life in the 21st century.

For three hours, we enjoyed culinary delights in an old farmhouse setting, where six courses were served up at a leisurely pace, dishes made extraordinary by use of fresh ingredients (some hand-picked on the spot), careful preparation, skilled cooking and intimate hospitality.

This is strictly BYOB. Ellen and I brought a single bottle of Chianti to accompany us through the whole meal. A party of six appeared to have brought a different bottle of wine to accompany each course, possibly picked out by Chef Justin Naylor whose expertise in wine and knowledge of each dish would make for a winning combination.

Think Babette's Feast, but in the rolling hills and green fields of Stillwater, Pennsylvania.

Plus we dressed for dinner! This was totally unexpected. We were hitting the boutiques and thrifts shops in Bloomsburg, PA in the afternoon, and found ourselves looking at wedding gowns at the Salvation Army. We saw some evening wear on the same rack and suddenly thought, "Hey, let's go out tonight in evening wear!" So we spent the next hour pulling together two party outfits -- fit for elegant dining.

Here's how the evening went:

Course 1: Salad of baby lettuces, fresh picked from Old Tioga garden. I exclaimed with pleasure when I had the first bite. I don't know if it was the tender, fresh-picked greens, or the exquisite dressing (made of the usual olive oil, red wine vinegar, sea salt and pepper!) that made this salad so good. I only know that it made me want to cry, and set te tone for the rest of the meal. Mmmm.

Course 2: Potato croquettes with prosciutto. I wish I had a picture. This was Ellen's favorite course. She said she could have eaten those croquettes - exquisitely golden brown on the outside, freshly mashed potatoes on the inside seasoned perfectly and mixed with delicious bits of prosciutto -- forever.

This is as good a time as any to mention that each course was a small portion of food - the cumulative effect was that by the end of the meal you were full, satisfied, but not stuffed or uncomfortable. So many restaurants think they have to give large amounts of food in order to satisfy their customers. There's a place for that kind of economy, but it's not in a six-course meal. We were each served two potato croquettes.

Course 3: Thin-crusted pizza with sausage and mozzarella di bufala.
What can I say? The fresh basil was the piece de resistance of this flat-crusted delight.

Ellen and Rae with Course 4: House-made tortelloni filled with ricotta, sauced with butter & sage. Feeling the good vibes flow.

Again, I wish I had a picture of Course 5: Meatballs of veal and spinach with tomatoes and cream. Ellen was beginning to wear out by this time - she gave me half of her second meatball. My endurance was unfazed...

6th and final course: Flourless chocolate cake. This was like the moistest brownie you've ever tasted, with a crunchy exterior and dusted with confectioner's sugar.

Chef Justin Naylor chatting over final course.

I wish I had picture of our hostess, Dillon Naylor, but unfortunately she was the one taking all the pix. Dillon was a vision of beauty and hospitality in an ivory shirt and long skirt. Their two young sons were at "Grandmom's", nearby, for an overnight.

Their prix–fixe menu is $50, including 6% PA sales tax and gratuity. You need to get on their reservation list in advance, because once they announce the menus and dates for a season, the seats fill quickly. We got on their list in mid-March. They sent out the season's dates and menus on April 1. By April 3 all but a few seats were filled. They have only a single seating per night, one night per week, and their season is the Summer only. (They may be opening for Fall soon.)

Hot off the presses - Viper by John Desjarlais

2011-06-08T13:09:00.002-04:00

Murder mystery Viper by John Desjarlais is available for purchase online. Come and get it, and see why I enjoyed interviewing its author last month.

How the Daughters of St. Paul watch movies mindfully - you can do this in your parish too.

2011-06-02T11:08:00.002-04:00

This is my first attempt to use the create links option in blogger.

Praying with the movies? You bet. This is one reasons I became a Pauline Cooperator!
Sr. Margaret Joseph reveals two ways the Paulines connect film viewing with God-musing.

Zeke and Amelia Norton - late Spring update

2011-06-02T10:26:00.011-04:00

Update from the Nortons of Selma, Alabama. My two southern grandchildren are growing up nicely!

Paterfamilias David Norton writes:

It's been pretty busy for us, though we've had a few unexpected moments of quiet.

Zeke is still doing well hitting the ball in practice and in games. He's gotten a double and some more singles. The coaches have let him play short stop in one inning of a game (that we were losing badly), and he has played other infield positions in practice, and has done pretty well.

His team is in a bit of a slump, but Zeke is unaware of it. He thinks they've won all of their games, and he's wondering when they'll get their trophy.

Zeke turned six on May 26th! He woke up at 3 A.M. or so to let us know. Gabe got him back to sleep, but he let us know right away again when he awoke around 6 A.M.

He got a magic kit for his birthday that he was excited to use on his Dad Dad.

Amelia had a big dance recital, where she danced on stage at an old school downtown. It was a huge crowd, as there were lots of dance students doing their dances for family and friends.

At the end of the show, lots of girls who had danced for a number of years received trophies from their dance teacher. Amelia was tearful coming home at the end of a very long, and late night, as she had not received a trophy for her dancing.

Gabe reassured her that none of the girls could get trophies until they had danced for three years.

Upon hearing that, Zeke insisted that he will dance now, and plans to win thousands of dance trophies when he dances for fifty years.

Interview with Karina Fabian on Infinite Space, Infinite God II

2011-05-18T09:23:00.017-04:00

Today I am interviewing Karina Fabian , who with her husband Rob Fabian has edited two very entertaining science fiction anthologies with Catholic themes. Today we concentrate on Infinite Space, Infinite God II (ISIGII).

My daughter-in-law Carrie, when she heard I was doing this interview, said "Catholic science fiction? What in the world would be in it?"

"Not hard to answer that one," I replied. "It's got everything that 'regular' science fiction has in it -- space travel, alien cultures on far-off planets, artificial intelligence, cyberpunk, time travel, robots, space wars... you name it, you'll find it here."

Check it out. At the end of this interview, you'll see that Karina admits that if the sales for ISIGII are not there, ISIGIII is not going to happen. If you're looking for an intriguing read, or a unique gift for a Catholic SF buff, BUY NOW!

1. I have always been curious about how one goes about putting together an anthology. I did not read Infinite Space, Infinite God I, so while you might have covered the question when that book came out, my readers might be as ignorant and curious as myself.

Which comes first, the stories or the publisher? For Infinite Space, Infinite God II (ISIGII), did you pitch the idea to publishers and then go out seeking stories? Or did you call for story submissions, assemble your book, and then go looking for a publisher?

This was definitely a "Push-Me/Pull-You." We had some stories we wanted to sell as a collection, but not enough. The publisher suggested collecting other stories from authors to make an anthology. The result was Leaps of Faith (first e-pub'd by Francis Isidore, then published by The Writers' Café Press). I showed it to another publisher of mine, a friend, and he suggested on of exclusively Catholic stories, which became Infinite Space, Infintie God I. However, his company didn't want to risk branching into sci-fi, so we shopped it around until we found Twilight Times.

ISIG I has won some awards, so Twilight Times asked us to do a second anthology.

Rob and I feel we were led to create these, and we've certainly been blessed to meet and work with such talented writers.

2. Regardless of how the anthology comes about, how do you find your authors? For ISIGII did you approach certain authors whose work you knew, send out a general call for submissions, or do a little of both?

For Leaps of Faith, FrancisIsidore put out the call. For ISIG I and II, we approached the Leaps crew and put out feelers in duotrope.com, ralan.com, through my writing groups and the Catholic Writers' Guild.

3. Tell me about the cover art. I was very drawn to the image of the monstrance juxtaposed over the beautiful blues, greens, reds, whites and blacks of space. What does this image tell the casual bookstore browser about the contents of the book? Did you have control over the cover art, or did your publisher?

The cover art (done by the talented Kurt Ozinga www. ) is play off the cover for ISIG I. Contributor Ken Pick suggested keeping the monstrance and using a different space background. We love the effect--simple, striking, and really says what the book is about.

4. Three of your own stories appear in the anthology -- a "nuns in space" story, "Antivenin", and "Otherworld", a story about ministry in virtual reality, and "Frankie Phones Home". The characters in the first come from your novel-in-progress, Discovery. So we can look forward to seeing more of Sisters Rita, Ann and Tommie. And "Frankie..." gives a short, rousing end to Frankie's story from "Interstellar Calling" in ISIGI. But how about Father Jonas, the Jesuit who narrates "Otherworld"? Cyberpunk and Catholicism are a compelling mix. It seems to be that there are more stories of Otherworld to be told. Are there? I could see this as a continuing series.

I really wanted a cyberpunk story in ISIG II, but we had a hard time finding anyone who could pull it off, so I dinked around with some ideas and settled on exploring faith and morals in a virtual reality world where everything is "just a game." It was an interesting experience for me, because usually, I come up with the character first and the ideas, world, and plot afterward. Right now, I'm full up with other characters who demand I tell their stories (like Sisters Rita, Ann and Tommie). Father Jonas is pretty content, so while Otherworld would be fun to write in, it's low on the priority list.

5. Okay, here I want to be a little bit combative. In the brief editor's note that preceded "The Battle of the Narthex", you wrote, "Ready to laugh? Get ready for a lighthearted look at alien technology, power-hungry nobility, supernatural events, and your not-so-average Saturday evening Mass." I am a purist, and never read the editor's notes until I have finished the story. I finished "The Battle of the Narthex" sighing from a powerful Aristotelian catharsis -- I thought it one of the finest stories in the collection, and was completely puzzled by its characterization as humorous. If that is Alex Lobdell writing humorously, then I definitely need to read his serious fiction.

You will love Alex's serious fiction. "High Hopes for the Dead" in Leaps of Faith is one of my all-time favorite stories.

But seriously (sic), satisfy me on that point. What grabbed you to make you think of this story primarily as lighthearted? I thought the alien technology was fascinatingly clever and plausible. Their cloaking technology fit perfectly as an explanation of human sightings of aliens, demons, angels, etc. But what really grabbed me in the story was the nobility of the old warrior, facing a sinking sun of glory days gone and present times treated as an irrelevance. I am wondering if an age difference explains our different reactions to the story. As a sixty-something, I am an aging warrior myself. Have you gotten any other feedback indicating a difference in how the story was received by readers of different generations?

They say that a story has two elements: what the writer puts into it and what the reader puts into it. Sounds like you really got into the battle while we were more taken by the humor in the battle.

We find Alex has a very wry humor and a talent for giving old cliché's a new twist, and he uses it to great effect in "Battle of the Narthex." The aliens impersonating ghosts tickled us, like how the alien head researcher had a photo of himself impersonating a headless ghost at the Tower of London--downloaded, of course, from a human's ghosthunter website.

The quirks in the technology made us chuckle--it's an old gag, but Alex knows just how to make it a natural part of events. My favorite part, of course, was his incorporating the Catholic Mass and parish with the alien battle--like the countdown coinciding with the missile flying past the Stations of the Cross. Rob loved the perspectives of the parishioners.

We also enjoyed the ironic twists. However, I'm stopping here because I don't want to give too much away.

6. Talk to me about the elegiac tone of "The Ghosts of Kourion" and "Cathedral". The first leaves a sweet-bitter feeling, the second a bitter-sweet. Did you consciously think of these two as having similarities when you included them in the anthology?

Not consciously. We didn't really analyze the stories so much as choose ones that read well and left us either touched or thoughtful--or preferably, both. These two certainly accomplished both. I especially loved the last lines of "Cathedral": Jared, Argentine, don't you know Kat's falling? …And no one's there to catch her... I like to think Someone did.

7. "An Exercise in Logic" is a legal thriller blended with an alien prophecy tale with a dollop of colonization ethics thrown in. Any additional thoughts on the clash of religious cultures and law between Sr. Julian and the high priests of Honendo?

No, except that we found the Honendo as delightful as they were infuriating, and hope Barton will write more stories with them. However, we didn't see the clash so much as religious cultures and law as a clash of two alien thought processes.

8. (Possible SPOILERS) Colleen Drippe's stroy "Tenniel" sets up a situation where a space-traveling missionary priest has to choose between passivity that will surely end in death, and acting in a way that is contrary to his vocation. So tell me, Karina -- when you read the story for the first time, were you applauding Father Tenniel as he makes his decision to stand and fight? I know I was.

I was torn. Part of me said, "That's not the right thing," the other was saying, "That's what will get the job done." Even Colleen said Fr. Tenniel still wonders if he followed God's will. Of course, that's the point: even for the most faithful, life isn't always black-and-white.

9. Robots, androids, replicants, cyborgs, Cylons, synthoids, humanoids -- and now we have the andorganics of "Tin Servants". What kinds of artificial intelligences turn you on? Have you ever felt friendly towards your GPS, computer, or other intelligent device?

What I'd really want is an AI implant in my skull to help me remember all my appointments, obligations, etc., with a low-level nag feature. I have a story with such an implant, used as an assistant in time travel, but I've not touched it in a long time.

I do love the GPS. We call her "Techa" in Rob's truck. Rob, of course, adores his Nexus, which has done a far better job than his wife in helping him keep on a diet and exercise regimen!

We're steadily moving toward the age of androids and cyborgs. The work with prosthetics is amazing, and we recently saw a YouTube video of a singing robot that looks very convincing.

10. Okay, I gotta tell you. I was pretty confused by "Basilica". Hard science and heresy -- the Priscillians no less! I don't really have a question other than this - do you think I should go read up on the Priscillians and then tackle the story again?

Please do and let us know what you think. We personally didn't feel the need to get into deep background about it--the story itself was a great adventure on its own--but one of the best things about fiction like this is that it makes people want to think, to explore, to dig deeper. It's why we call the ISIG books "thought-provoking science fiction."

11. How did Joan Fong like Frankie's resolution in "Frankie Phones Home"?

You know, while she thanked us when we told her what we'd done, she never told us what she thought of the story! LOL. I'll have to send her a copy and ask. We've lost track of each other in the past year or so. However, I can say that the story was pretty much what she asked for: Frankie returning home to explain her sudden disappearance, and to ask forgiveness.

12. After "Battle of the Narthex", I found "Cloned to Kill" the most poignant story. It reminded me a bit of the movie "Inside Daisy Clover." This is as good a place as any to ask, what was your editing hand like? Did you do much editing of the submitted stories? Did you ask for any re-writes?

Most of the stories required a very light hand for editing. We asked for a couple of re-writes, mostly on technical basis. (This is Rob's bailiwick: If the world has this technology, then why doesn't the character use it this way?) Of course, we also extended the deadline for submissions twice in order to make sure we got truly awesome stories. Definitely worth the wait.

13. One last, silly question, but I have to ask: were you thinking of The Fantastic Mr. Fox when you read Dyads?

I'd never heard of him, and after looking him up, I still didn't connect the two. Ken Pick and Alan Loewen have built a truly unique universe with some fabulous aliens, which, while resembling Terry (ak Terran) creatures, are really their own individual--and fascinating--species. We think that's the genius behind "Dyads": interacting with a species that is so different from humans, yet with enough familiarities that some characters might think of them as less than sentients--or even less than human.

14. I lied. This is the real last question. Do you think there will be an Infinite Space, Infinite God III? What would you like to see in a third anthology, if you did one?

I'll be honest: I believe Infinite Space, Infinite God II is going to have to sell a lot better to justify an ISIG III.

You heard her, folks. Go thou forth now and BUY! So many ways to do it, too:

Buy it from Amazon:

Buy it from the publisher, Twilight Times Books

But it from Barnes and Noble

Buy in E-book formats at Fictionwise

Interview with Ann Lewis on Murder in the Vatican: The Church Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes

2011-05-10T07:21:00.007-04:00

Today I have a guest blogger, my good friend and fellow Pious Lady Debora Hosey. Debora is an inveterate lover of all things Sherlockian. She will be posing questions to Ann Lewis about her book Murder in the Vatican: The Church Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes.

Debora Hosey discovered Sherlock Holmes nearly fifty years ago when a teacher had to find a way to entertain chorus members at a night-time Christmas concert when they were slated to be the final act...she read them "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" by flashlight -- and to this day, Debora continues to be thrilled by the Master Detective...

Debora is a writer of poetry and short fiction, an online reviewer, a mother of two /grandmother of four, and a lector at St. John's-Holy Angels parish in Newark, Delaware.

1. How did you come to write about Holmes?
I fell in love with Holmes in high school. In college, in one of my re-readings of the Canon, I saw the reference to the “sudden death of Cardinal Tosca” and I wanted to write it in the worst way. However, I didn’t have the writing ability to tackle the project. I put the idea aside, then 20 years later when I was moving I found my notes and realized that I’d grown enough as a writer to give it a shot. That and the fact that Holmes is mostly public domain inspired me to give a shot now.

2. The three stories are vibrant and rich in detail. Did you do a lot of research before writing...and did anything surprise or startle you?
I did a lot of research – much with primary source material when it came to Pope Leo. One fact that surprised me was that so many facts of history just fell into place for me. The fact that the Catholic Cathedral was finally being built at the right time, the fact that Leo was ordained the same year that Victoria became queen, etc. Research added the flesh to the bones of my original story ideas.

3. Did you reread any of the stories to help you prepare writing your book? Do you have a favorite Holmes story?
I reread the Canon over and over while I wrote, and actually did “word searches” through the digital text to see if a word had been used by Doyle. And I like too many of the stories to say I have an absolute favourite. “Scandal in Bohemia” comes to mind as does “Red Headed League.” But I think “Hound of the Baskervilles” will always be the one closest to my heart because it was the first one I read.

4. What's been the reaction of Sherlockians regarding the religious nature of the stories? I would guess that the non-religiously inclined would embrace the more traditional "The Second Coptic Patriarch." I loved "The Death of Cardinal Tosca," and especially, "The Vatican Cameos." By the end of the latter, I was hoping for more Leo XIII stories! It was especially delightful meeting up with Fr. Brown in two of the stories...

I’m glad you liked Papa Leo. I loved him, too and I would love to write some stories with him as the star. Not sure how well they’d go over. We’d have to see. However, in the Sherlockian community you have a nice mix of folks. I’ve received compliments from most people, even those who are atheists. One in particular, an atheist, read the book twice and he doesn’t like pastiches…which made me so very happy.

5. Sherlock Holmes is making a comeback these days...what do you think the appeal is?
He’s a classic. He’s a unique character that everyone likes to copy (Dr. House, for instance). He’s got a whacky personality and he’s exciting to read. And his buddy is just as fun (Dr. Watson). What is there not to like?

6. If you could ask Arthur Conan Doyle one question about Sherlock Holmes, what would it be?
Why didn’t you realize what a wonderful thing you’ve created? Doyle hated Holmes and felt he took too much attention away from his “greater works” of historical fiction. But when you create something whose popularity spans more than a century, he has to realize he created something amazing.

7. Do you plan on future Church Mysteries or Holmes stories?
Holmes stories, yes. I have one book written called The Watson Chronicles that I must find a home for. It’s a novel in stories about Watson (but Holmes is a BIG part of it, of course).

8. Finally, what would you like for readers to come way with after reading Murder in the Vatican: The Church Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes?
I would hope that they simply had a lot of fun reading the book. That’s the primary reason I wrote it—so that people can have an enjoyable read.

Interview with John Desjarlais on VIPER -- a new mystery coming out in June

2011-04-18T15:45:00.008-04:00

Don't mess with Selena...

Fans of John Desjarlais' mystery novel Bleeder will be happy to know that its sequel, Viper, is scheduled for release in June!* Viper places insurance agent Selena De La Cruz from Bleeder front and center. Selena's harrowing past comes back to haunt her when she discovers her name inscribed in St. Mary's parish's Book of the Dead -- along with the names of others who are being killed off one by one! I am happy to have John with me today, virtually, as I find out what he's up to with this latest mystery.

Q: You've spoken in other venues about the challenges you faced as a white, middle-aged male creating a credible young Mexican-American woman from whose point of view the story is told. But briefly, for my audience, can you talk about the research that went into bringing Selena De La Cruz to life as a full-bodied protagonist after her stint as a side character in Bleeder?

A: As with other research, I did a lot of reading. There’s an emerging body of work aimed at the rapidly-growing Latin female population in the USA that discusses the struggle of developing a bicultural identity. These books and articles discuss the delicate and on-going balancing act of maintaining Old World (Mexican, Guatemalan, Cuban etc) traditions and expectations with New World realities regarding faith, family, marriage, education, work – everything. I interviewed Latinas from various backgrounds about their experiences; I browsed Latinas’ blogs and websites to listen in on their cultural conversations. I subscribed to Latina magazine for insight into relationships, fashion, and other lifestyle issues. There was more, but I’ll stop here.

All of this material went onto note cards that I obsessively reviewed as I developed Selena’s ‘backstory’ about her family, education and so on, seeing patterns in the life experiences of the women I’d read about and making them Selena’s own. I sent the work-in-progress to Latina readers, asking them for absolutely honest feedback on whether or not I was getting the ‘woman’ thing right and all the cultural material right. They corrected me on occasion (“Oh, a woman would never say that” or “That’s a Cuban custom; the Mexican one is…”). A professional translator worked with me on the Spanish and all the rest (Thanks, Maria!). In addition, I read some other crime novels that featured Latina protagonists to see how the characters were handled (there aren’t many), such as Lupe Solano, the PI created by Carolina Garcia-Aguilera (a Cuban), and Nashville-cop-turned-FBI-Agent Romilia Chacon, created by a fella, Marcos Villatoro (a Salvadoran).

That brings me to the other part, the part that isn’t strictly ‘female’ or ‘cultural.’ Selena is an insurance agent, and so I had to do research on the business – again, by books and by interviews with real agents, including my own (Thanks, Gregg!). She is a former Special Agent with the DEA, and so there was all that research about Academy training, DEA undercover operations, interrogation techniques, drug raids, financial tracing, the works. I may have overdone the sexism but I wanted to add a layer about a woman in a man’s world, which is also a cultural one (men have certain privileges in Mexican culture that a woman doesn’t have). I took firearms lessons to feel Selena’s favorite pistol, a P226 SIG Sauer, in my hand. Man, is it loud – like her car. Lastly, I found a Latina model at a photo website that was Selena, dead-on, and I printed out (and paid for) several of her shots to display around my desk. My DEAR wife didn’t mind, God bless her. So there was Selena, always watching, and if I had a problem with the story, I’d ask her about it. She always has an opinion. That’s her on the cover art.

Q: Selena knows more about cars than most men, and more about shoes than most women I know. Do you yourself have any native expertise in either of these subjects, or is it all Selena? How important is it to her to excel in both of these areas? Is she aware of how attractive and imposing a woman in hot shoes with a fast car can be?

A: It’s all her. It’s very important for her to excel in both areas. She’s a tomboy but also very feminine; she can be in denim overalls one minute and a taffeta dress the next.

As for the car: Selena learned everything from her fraternal twin brother Antonio who became a mechanic in the Army and who bequeathed the vintage Charger to her in his Army will.

As for the shoes – well, Latinas dig the zappatos and they are very much a part of a Latina’s femininity and power as a woman. A girl receives her first pair of high heels from her father at her ‘Quinceañera,” a lavish prom-like coming-of-age event at age 15. One of my Latina readers of the work-in-progress made some suggestions for the footwear but I made most of the choices. Nothin’ weird – you just go to zappos.com and browse.

As for attractive -- Selena was aware of the power of her sexuality just before her Quince on that Family Swim Day at the Y when she took a dare and dove from the top diving board, made a clean entry into the water, and emerged with her purple maillot swimsuit glistening and the twist-front neckline a little too low. She shook out her hair, every eye at poolside fixed on her and every male jaw slacked in wonder. Her three protective brothers threw towels on her and hustled her away, warning their friends not to get any ideas, while Selena objected in virulent Spanish ¡Permita que vaya! ¿Está loco? not yet realizing the impact she’d made.

Q: When writing this mystery, how much of the story did you discover as you went along, and how much did you construct in your head beforehand? At what part in your creative process did you finalize the plot for Viper? When did you know who the murderer was? (No spoilers please).

A: This is an excellent question because some writers are outliners and some are blank-pagers, but I’m both. I knew how it started and what the ‘set-up’ was, and I knew (in general) how I wanted it to end – the ‘pay-off’ – but the broad middle was a process of discovery. I had the ‘advantage’, one might say, of the story being a police procedural of sorts. Police investigations are very methodical and so I followed what might be the normal course of an investigation (you asked about research before – this was part of research, too). But I had a terrible time trying to find the real relationship between the ‘hit list’ killings of the “Book of the Dead” and the appearances of “The Blue Lady” to the local girl visionary, Jacinta. I wondered if it might be a separate story altogether, but no – it was part of the whole Mexican angle since it might be Our Lady of Guadalupe, and Jacinta represents Selena’s chance to finally redeem her mistake of shooting a little girl Jacinta’s age in a botched drug raid. The identity of the killer changed twice – or was it three – no, four times. I didn’t realize who it really was until near the end. Then I had to go back and make revisions that provided clues but also kept a reader guessing. This is the part that scares a writer, because you might forget to change something that must be changed to be consistent with the ‘new’ story.

Q: Tell us about Jacinta, the so-called visionary. Is this little girl mentally ill? Spiritually precocious? Is the awe of the people (even the drug lords) at her locutions and visions pure superstition, or are there more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our 21st century philosophy?

Part of the research concerned Marian apparitions. As your readers may know, there are MANY alleged apparitions of The Blessed Mother but the Catholic Church does not recognize all of them. Most are dismissed as invalid and the imagining of an enthusiastic or ill seer. Others are found, after rigorous investigation, to be genuine ‘private’ revelations that are both meaningful to the visionary, and worthy of belief by the faithful. The Church never requires belief in any private revelation, even those 'approved' apparitions in which thousands profess a deep faith. Fatima, Lourdes, and Guadalupe, among others (I forget how many, forgive me, but it’s not many), fall into this category. The ‘excitement’ surrounding Jacinta is under diocesan investigation.

Nearly all of these ‘approved’ events involve young girls like Jacinta – pre-teen, uneducated, and not particularly devout. So she is the ‘typical’ visionary. It was necessary for her to be Mexican so that the mysterious “Blue Lady” who appears to her (and only to her; no one else can see her – also typical) could possibly be Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patroness of Mexico, or something more sinister – the Aztec goddess of death. Among Mexicans, there is still some acknowledgment of the ancient deities, and there is a growing superstitious devotion to a figure called “Saint Death,” a female grim reaper of sorts. This figure is especially important in the drug trade. There are shrines to “Saint Death” outside Catholic churches and cathedrals in Mexico. It isn’t unusual for a parishioner to go inside for confession, and on the way out place an offering of flowers and cigarettes at the shrine – just to hedge one’s bets.

The original visionary who encountered Our Lady of Guadalupe was not a girl but a middle-aged peasant man, Juan Diego. His cape (‘tilma’) that is impressed with the image of Our Lady dressed as a pregnant Aztec princess framed by sun-rays is on display in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. It may be a miracle in itself that the cactus-based cloth hasn’t deteriorated in over 500 years and the striking image is still plain to see.

Q: Some writers say they practically emerged from the womb writing, and some came to it slowly in life. How old you were when you wrote your first piece of fiction or poetry? Did you show it to anyone? Do you still have it?

A: I wrote a short story in 3rd grade about my dog. The teacher mimeographed it – my first publication. I wrote spy stories in junior high and was on the staff of my high school newspaper and literary magazine, publishing material for both. I must have copies of “The Red and Gray” around somewhere.

Q: You began writing Bleeder as a devout Presbyterian, and entered into full communion with the Catholic Church shortly after the book's completion. Have you noticed any differences between writing as a Catholic and writing as a Presbyterian?

A: I’m much freer. There is a majesty, a mercy, and a mystery in the Catholic tradition that somehow informs my view of the world which has greatly expanded. It is a ‘sacramental’ view wherein one actively looks for the unseen in the seen, for the universal in the particular – for God at work in the small things. And while Protestants agree with the Biblical anthropology that humans are both dignified yet fallen, and that redemption is possible, the Catholic tradition puts more emphasis on human choices for good or ill, cooperating with the grace of God or not. This is what makes a “Catholic” work like “Lord of the Rings” so powerful – that at the end, even Gollum, so ruined and disfigured by his grasping for illusory power in the ring, has a final chance to be restored – and rejects it.

Q: You gave an excellent talk on poetry at the Summer, 2010 Catholic Writers Guild conference. Are you currently writing any poetry?

A: I do this in spurts when I teach the poetry writing class at my college. I’m focused on fiction for now.

Q: What's next for you? Are you actively working on the new adventure for Selena that you announced awhile back? Will we see Reed Stubblefield again?

A: Yes, there is a third novel in progress with both Selena De La Cruz and Reed Stubblefield (a romance is afoot). The plot involves insurance fraud. That’s all I should probably say. Writers are wary about ‘talking out’ their novel before it is written. And so much can change.

Q: One last question. The Virgin of Guadalupe, or The Blue Lady, or Lady Death -- who would take whom in a fight?

A: Your readers will have to read VIPER to find out. There IS a confrontation at the end ;-)

Okay, folks, there you have it. You have to read the book to get to the final confrontation! And while you are waiting for Viper to come out, get a copy of Bleeder – now on Kindle! – while you Investigate Higher Mysteries at http://www.johndesjarlais.com/

*As you may know, Sophia Institute Press, publisher of both Bleeder and Viper, announced recently that Holy Spirit College in Atlanta, GA and the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, NH have formed a collaborative partnership to preserve and oversee the continuing operations of Sophia Institute Press. This delayed the publication of Viper a bit but June, 2011 has finally been settled on as the publishing month.

One small time@bat for Zeke - one giant score for the Blue Ox!

2011-04-14T18:42:00.026-04:00

Auntie Gerry, this one's for you! A blow by blow look at Zeke's first baseball game. (Photo and text by Zeke's dad.)

Zeke's first baseball game was Saturday morning. His team is "Blue Ox." His team has five and six year olds on it. Zeke is five, but will be six in May.(Zeke is the rightmost player):

Amelia went to the game also. She ate apples.

Zeke got his turn at bat. The players are required to wear helmets in the infield until they return to the dugout:

Zeke swings.... Zeke hit the ball - the pitcher got it pretty quickly, and threw it to first base. Zeke ran as fast as he could run.

The ball arrived at first base just a step before Zeke arrived. Fortunately, the first baseman dropped the ball just as Zeke stepped onto the base. (Safe, whew!)

Zeke discusses his next move with his coach:
The next player hit the ball, and Zeke headed for second base... Whew. Safe again - and now at second base. One of his teammates hit a foul ball - and Zeke had to go back to second base again. Zeke waited again at second base, ready to make his move. Wow - a hit - and an overthrown ball at first base.... Run! Run! Run! Zeke rumbled to home plate... Good job! Zeke immediately took off his helmet. He looked into the crowd, and I gestured for him to put his helmet back on his head. Zeke smiled, waved to the crowd, and headed back to the dug out - helmet in hand. We made it back home. One time at bat - one score for Zeke. One very nice win for the Blue Ox team.

Mourning my sins

2011-04-04T19:19:00.009-04:00

Lord, who throughout these forty days

For us didst fast and pray,

Teach us with Thee to mourn our sins

And close by Thee to stay.

Okay, we've just celebrated the Fourth Sunday of Lent. We've rounded the Lenten corner and are heading full speed towards the Triduum. This year I’m trying to take seriously the concepts of mourning my sins and mortification of the flesh. I got out of practice during the decades that these concepts fell out of favor -- the swinging sixties and seventies, the fractious eighties and nineties. The younger generation of Catholics, who never experienced the chaos of those times, are doing an excellent job reclaiming both forms of Catholic T/tradition, with and without the capital "T". New editions of classic works of spirituality are out, with commentary that explains and integrates the best insights of modern psychology and psychiatry with the wisdom of the saints.

I've been defending sin, repentance, and reparation in argument for decades. But applying the concepts to my own life and psyche, not so much. Every Lent I start out with good intentions to really observe the season well, but I pretty much give up after a few days. I wind up fulfilling my surface commitments -- praying a little more, staying away from the things I've given up -- but my head starts hurting when I try to reconcile Catholic teaching on sin, repentance, penance, etc. with the black mess of gunk in my mind and heart, those poles of the psyche around which my various passions gather and cling like metal to magnets.

This Lent coincides with the spring 40 Days for Life campaign. Every morning, I go into Planned Parenthood to pray, hand out literature, and keep vigil next to a place of violence. This has had a jolting effect on my observance of Lent. Each day, I interact with women and men who choose to participate in one of the great evils of our time, procured abortion. Each morning I feel like I am going to a war zone. I know what is taking place behind closed doors.

Because we are fortunate enough not to have open warfare in our country, we in the U.S. send our soldiers far away from us to kill in war. This allows us to debate the ethics of war at leisure, because of the geographical distance between us and the killing. If we lived in an actual war zone, or if we had a non-volunteer army so that each mother and father was vulnerable to seeing their sons and daughters drafted to go to war, perhaps we would think more about what we are engaged in. We would get involved more with our legislators, educate ourselves on the issues, and be more interested in finding non-violent solutions to the problems that lead to war.

The violence of abortion is very real to me when I spend day after day interacting with those who choose this violent solution to problems. I hear stories, see tears, absorb anger. The vulnerability and fragility of people who are living on the edges of society is very real to me also. I meet the homeless of Wilmington, and the folks in court-ordered rehab, and men and women without jobs who stop to talk as they go in and out of nearby resource centers.

As Thou with Satan didst contend, And didst the victory win, O give us strength in Thee to fight, In Thee to conquer sin.

Contending with Satan – is that something a 21st century American like myself can be said to do? Did Christ do it? What was the nature of his temptation, and how is he capable of giving us strength to fight and conquer sin? How crazy does all this sound to a modern secular sensibility? The original word “satan” – in the Hebrew, הַשָׂטָן or ha-Satan – means “the accuser”, and in the Old Testament is a figure who tests the faith of God’s chosen ones. Later in Christian times, “Satan” began to be personified and identified with Lucifer, the “light-bearer”, the original fallen angel, our devil.

My faith is tested every day. I feel “accused” by common sense, and I think any disciple of Christ has to feel that accusation. Because let’s face it, the tenets of our faith fly in the face of common sense, which is all about the world of the senses. Yet we Christians hold the invisible world as important (if not more important) as the visible. It’s right there in the Nicean Creed, which every Catholic recites at Sunday Mass – “we believe in all things visible and invisible.”

And through these days of penitence, And through Thy passiontide, Yea, evermore in life and death, Jesus, with us abide.

I cannot over-emphasize how important the juxtaposition of “life and death” has become to me this Lent. Because of the deaths I am near to every day at the abortion clinic, this Lent has taken me back in time to the Lent of 1982, which began with the sudden death of my two year old son Simon. That Lent, every Lenten liturgy, every Lenten prayer and practice, made excellent sense to me. Simon's death had ripped open the veil between the visible and the invisible, and all of the ugly blackness of death -- that ultimate affront to life -- spilled out. The liturgies of loss, mourning, and a world deformed by sin made sense to me in 1982. It makes sense to me again in 2011. But I am much older, and the grief is not as personal, nor does it consume me. It simply exists, a profound grief for the sad, sad plight of sinful humankind.

And then, I remember that starkly beautiful choice God gave to Israel long ago in the desert:

I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose therefore life, that both you and your offspring may live.

And again, the starkly beautiful choice Christ gave to "those who had ears to hear" (then and now) when he began his public ministry:

The time (καιροσ or kairos) is fulfilled (πεπληρωται or peplērōtai), and the kingdom of God (βασλεια του Θεου, or basileia tou Theou) has come near (ηγγικεν or ēngiken), repent (μετανοιετε or metanoiete) and believe (πιστευετε or pisteuete) the good news (ευαγγελιω or evangellion). *

Life and death are set before us every day. This Lent, I see a very close connection to the words of the Creed -- – “we believe in all things visible and invisible” and God’s admonition in Deuteronomy – “I have set before you life and death… Choose therefore life.”

If the only world we believe in is the world of the senses, the visible world, the world of emotions and temporal events, then we will be predisposed to choose death. The physical universe heads towards entropy, even as our physical lives head towards dissolution in death.

But in the fullness of time, the promised Christ appeared in history, lived out his life, preached, taught, healed, wept, suffered, died, and then gloriously ripped open the veil between the visible and the invisible, and came back alive and active in the visible world long enough to finalize the formation of his provision for us through the rest of time -- his Church.

I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.

How do we choose life? Repent, and believe the ευαγγελιω . This Lent, I am feeling both closer to my sins than ever, and more grateful than ever that I have been set free from them. So do I mourn them like lost children? They are my own, so perhaps I do.

--------

* TOTH to Fr. David Moore; see his excellent homily, Repentance and Time.

My cool cute beloved grandchildren - pix from Maryland and Alabama

2011-03-22T07:32:00.016-04:00

Donal with giant toothbrush

Amelia picking Spanish moss Zeke on swing

Amelia with flowers in her hair

Pickin' more o' the moss

Donal pre-school pic

Maria, Dave and Donal - winter 2010

Amelia

Zeke with his Christmas crossbow

Zeke and Amelia on swing

Donal drinking his morning... latte? coolata?

Zeke in camoflage

Darling Amelia

I love my grandchildren!

I just discovered I am grandmother once again - little Ish will have a little brother or sister in a few short months!!

Best Use of LOTR Shire Theme in a flash mob, ever!

2011-03-01T13:26:00.003-05:00

I love, love, love this video showing a pro-life flash mob coming out for a pro-choice rally in Chicago. Give it up for the kids of this generation -- they know they are abortion survivors, they know they only acquired moral worth after the gauntlet of 9 months in the most dangerous place in America to live -- the womb of their mom. Unlike the victims of slavery, these "chattel" were set free at birth and became able to grow up and fight for the rights of the other human chattel running the gauntlet of their mother's wombs now.

I am aware that several of my readers have made the choice to abort. My horror at the social evil of this form of slavery does not extend to those who have chosen to end their pregnancies this way. Each of us is responsible for our own actions, and none of us is in a position to judge save the One Who will judge us all. And that judgment, unlike human judgments, will be absolutely fair and truthful. As much as I am in shock and awe at the anticipation of my own judgment, I look forward to it because truth is more important than delusion, and our human lives are full of delusion. I look forward to being disabused of my own delusions, as painful as I know that will be. Because truth, in love, is a truth I can live with, and hope to live with forever. So I have absolutely no place within myself that wants in any way to judge any other human being, but only myself, and only with an eye towards uncovering my own delusions in anticipation of the moment of truth that I hope to meet with eyes wide open.

Captive Daughter, Enemy Wife: A Novel by Mary Tweedy

2011-02-22T19:54:00.006-05:00

Rae’s Rantings on Books, Films, and Popular Culture

Captive Daughter, Enemy Wife
By Mary Tweedy
A Novel

In a Nutshell: Closely observed tale of tribal life among Native American tribes in French Canada in the late 1600’s. Contains scenes of bloodshed and ritual torture among warring Indian nations and towards European missionaries. Appropriate for middle-school children to adults.

The Story: White Corn is a Native American girl born into the village of Kandoucho, part of a North American Indian confederacy known as the Neutrals, so named (by the French) because they remained neutral in the wars between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Huron. Neutral economy was based on agriculture supplemented by game, which was plentiful in what is now southern Ontario, Canada, and western New York. White Corn’s mother is Hole-in-the-Night, a Neutral woman whose extraordinary beauty and cool remoteness marks her as an object of awe and even fear. White Corn’s father is a Neutral brave who succumbs to an infectious disease brought by the French Jesuits (or “Blackrobes”) that kills half the population of White Corn’s village when she is four years old. Shortly afterwards, a French fur trader named Jean Aregnac arrives in the village. He ingratiates himself with Hole-in-the-Night’s clan until she accepts him as her husband.

When Jean enters White Corn’s life, he treats her with an affection that augments the stern care she has received from her undemonstrative mother. Jean teaches White Corn to read and gives her a book of fairy tales in French, which will later be supplemented by a sheaf of Catholic prayers copied out by hand by a French Jesuit at a fort. Jean brings White Corn, Hole-in-the-Night, and their new son Papillon to this fort for safety, after the aggressive Iroquois destroy Kandoucho in a harrowing ordeal which they barely survive.

But despite finding temporary peace with a People living in the shelter of the European fort, White Corn and her family suffer more losses when they are again attacked by Iroquois on a fishing trip. White Corn, her mother and her brother are taken captive and brought to the Iroquois village where custom dictates that any prisoners who survive the ritual torture of the males and the initial enslavement of the females be adopted into the tribe to take the place of clan members who have died in war or sickness. White Corn’s captors face the challenges of assimilating (or killing) first the Neutral enemies and, later, two Jesuit enemies who come into tribal life by means of capture. White Corn and her family, meanwhile, must use every skill they have to survive in this enemy environment.

The Plusses:

1) Entertaining, painless gateway to early American history. Although not specifically classified as a Young Adult novel, this historical adventure novel would make a terrific introduction to the culture of the Native Americans of northeastern North American at the time of the French colonization in the New World. In particular, it would be an ideal text for a home school setting.

Did you ever want to know how Indians handled the diapering of infants and the safe care of babies around fire, sharp knives etc. – how did they baby-proof their longhouses? Did you wonder how sexual relations were carried out between spouses when several couples, their children, and their single elders all lived together in one longhouse? What did the Iroquois-speaking Native Americans think of the “Fur-Faces” – their name for the bearded Europeans who came into their villages for purposes of trade or evangelization? What games did the children play? How about the adults? What did they do on long winter nights without television? How did they construct their homes, make their clothing, and obtain their food?

I used to love reading the Little House on the Prairie books for their fascinating details on pioneer life – learning how the white settlers built their homes, planted crops, hunted game, cooked food, and weathered the extremes of both winter and summer in a harsh environment. Captive Daughter, Enemy Wife comes at the same topics from the viewpoint of the Native Americans of the Iroquois-speaking societies (the Neutral tribes spoke a language similar to Iroquois) of the seventeenth century.

2) Realistic, sympathetic treatment of the clash of cultures during the time that Native American peoples faced the extraordinary onslaught of European colonization of the U.S. and Canada. The French fur trade, the Dutch settlements, and the Jesuit missionary activity brought a tremendous change to the balance of power and way of life of the Native American tribes among whom they settled. Ultimately, the colonization of the New World meant the effective end of tribal life as The Peoples of North American had known it. They became a conquered people. Captive Daughter, Enemy Wife looks at the beginning of that process from the point of view of the Indian. We see how the introduction of foreign staples like guns and alcohol brought changes and challenges to the Native American tribes. We look at the impact of the Christian missionaries on tribal life, for good and for ill.

3) An appealing heroine surrounded by compelling characters. White Corn does not convert to the Christian religion, but her natural compassion and sense of justice gives her a connection to and sympathy for the Blackrobes that her fellow tribesmen for the most part do not share. White Corn experiences the rhythm of tribal life in a society where women hold positions of influence; the author relates story after story showing the humor and wisdom of the women elders whose common sense helps to hold the tribes together. The warriors too are given their due, and the reader experiences first-hand how war is conducted with an eye always towards honor.

4) Beautiful, assured writing style. This is Mary Tweedy’s first novel. She was educated in Art History, Classical Archaeology, Classical Languages and Anthropology, and her rich narrative style no doubt owes something to her study in each of these fields.

The Minuses:

Slow pace. White Corn’s story unfolds at a leisurely pace. If your preferred reading fare is thrillers, mysteries and other genre novels then you may become impatient with the slow unfolding of White Corn’s story. This is not a problem for those who savor a measured pace. In the last seventy-five pages of the book the plot heats up and the novel takes on more of the aspect of a thriller. I did not find the slow pace a bad thing, although in consequence I did not speed through the book as I do with more page-turning fare. The book works as a slow immersion into White Corn’s world of dramatically changing tribal life. By the time the plot takes on an urgent pace, the reader is completely absorbed by White Corn’s gentle yet sturdy personality and longs to see the resolution of her story.

Final Assessment: Remarkable rendition of a fascinating time in U.S. and Native American history from a point of view sympathetic to both Native American and European culture and experience.

Samuel Mann - the world's coolest thanatophoric dwarf!

2011-02-21T08:20:00.005-05:00

Samuel Mann just keeps surprising his doctors and defying the odds. I've written about Samuel before. He was born with a condition known as thanatophoric dysplasia, the same form of dwarfism that my son Eric had.

Babies born with this condition have chest cavities that are too narrow to support normal lung development. They need a respirator in order to breathe. The condition is fatal, hence the term "thanatophoric" or "death-bearing". Most thanatophoric dwarfs die at birth. My son Eric lived for 100 days. February 18 marked the 29th anniversary of his death.

Eric lived his entire life out at the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of Wilmington Medical Center (now Christiana Care of Delaware). I've written about him here, in an article published by Delaware Medical Journal in 1985. The article focused on how parents cope with an infant born with a fatal condition -- an infant seemingly "born to die." In it I conclude:

No-one knew from the outset how long [Eric] would live, so the decision to live in hope and not in fear meant, for Eric, a commitment to his development and to the kind of interpersonal interaction that can only benefit an infant. Length of life cannot be used as a measure of the depth of experience of that life. Eric had a very difficult life, but he experienced love and he carried on the very human struggle for survival in a body that ultimately failed him, as our bodies will ultimately fail us.

Our loving interaction with him was consistent with our view of the parents' role in the lives of their children. While allowing for the special limitations of this infant's life, we were able to use the same parental model in dealing with Eric, to his and our benefit.
Samuel Mann's parents also choose to love their son and support his development with all their strength. Loving interaction has proven an amazing boon to Samuel.

Samuel is now five years old! He is one of six surviving thanatophoric dwarfs world-wide. Samuel is at home, enjoying a life with physical restrictions, but he is mobile within his limitations, he eats, he laughs (here he is at age three with his belly laugh) and, wonder of wonders, he can spend up to ten hours off his respirator, breathing on his own. This is amazing!

Read what his mom Evelyn reports. (Be sure to read her "One last story". It relates a casual encounter that everyone who has dealt with an intense situation will recognize):

Saturday, February 19, 2011 10:32 AM, CST

Hello Everyone,

We had a note worthy event last weekend that I thought I would share.

Here are two posts that I put on facebook last weekend:

Post 1: Samuel has been off the ventilator for 8 and a half hours now!!! Praise the Lord!!

Post 2: Ok, we thought it was time to put Samuel back on the vent after 9 hours. So we put him back on and for the next ten minutes he tried to take it off again. So now he is off the vent for ten hours by his choice!! Can you say WOW!!

He was off the ventilator until we put him to bed. The next day, Samuel did great. I thought it may have been too taxing for him but he did great!! He hasn't done that since. He has ways of letting us know that he wants his ventilator back : - ). We also make sure he is on the ventilator when he is sleeping.

So, this morning, Samuel wakes me up by pulling his trach out. (So the ventilator is working but no air is going in him because he pulled the tube out that goes into his neck.) I put it back in. He did it again. And he kept trying. So, now my tactic is to distract him so he can not "play" this way. He is happily bouncing in his new bouncer (this is his 6th bouncer in 5 years---he wore all the others out) and looking in the mirror at the handsome boy looking back at him. LOL!!

So the adventure of raising our sweet special boy continues. I am blessed to tears by the love of our church family and how they love on him every Sunday. The sunday before superbowl, Samuel was proudly tossing his toys on the floor to show off for four wonderful ladies who were loving on him. When he threw the toy the third time, one lady raised her arms in the air and said, "Touchdown, Samuel". I had tears streaming down my cheeks by their love and they joy they received from Samuel. It truly warmed my heart.

One last story. I was at the store returning a sweet gift we had received for Samuel for Christmas. It was long sleeves and a long pants. As these won't fit Samuel, we were exchanging them for something that had short sleeves. The sweet sales lady said, "Was there anything wrong with the items we were returning?" I had a split second to try to figure out how I was going to answer her question. Would I explain the special needs our son has or simply tell her the clothes didn't fit our son. So, instead of these fine options, I blurted out, "Our son is a dwarf." The nice sales girl didn't say a word and politely exchanged the items.

It was an odd moment for me. How do I share about sweet Sameul in 30 seconds or less. I want people to know that God does miracles today. Our son is a living breathing amazing work of God. My husband says he is God's alternate construction. I want people to know how rare our son is...the only survivor of 6 total worldwide that I know of. Thus showing more clearly the miracle of our son. I want people to see the beauty of our son's smile and the joy he exudes without saying a word. I want people to see Samuel and not his tubes and wires. I think for the most part, that is what people see because once you see his personality, the tubes and wires just melt away in the background.

I am a special needs mom and have been given an incredible gift to love on this sweet son we have been given by God as His miracle. I have an amazing husband who is the true unsung hero in this story. He wakes up for Samuel's every alarm at night and checks on him so I can get my rest. He knows that ventilator inside and out and he handles all the paperwork that goes along with a special needs child and coordinates all doctors, nurses and all therapy visits. When I prayed for a husband, God truly picked out the best one for me.

Thank you all for the beautiful comments and expressions of love that you leave in the guest book. I cherish and read each one. One day, we will have caringbridge bind them in a book for us. For now, I truly enjoy the love you share by leaving your comments. It has gotten me through many challenging days when Samuel was younger. Thank you for your continued prayers. We pray for the Lord to plant a hedge of protection around Samuel every day. We so need that. We thank you and covet your prayers.

Blessings,

Evelyn (Samuel's Mommy)

On Live Action's sting operations against Planned Parenthood, and the sin of lying

2011-02-09T11:29:00.004-05:00

I will make no bones about the fact that I feel within myself and others in my sphere of activity a swirling of spiritual forces gathering around the 30+ years holocaust of the unborn that is abortion in America. The chickens are coming home to roost in the revelations of Dr. Gosnell's House of Horrors and Lila Rose's undercover sting operations in Planned Parenthood clinics. The Washington Post, not likely to exaggerate the numbers, reported 27,000 young people registered for the January March for Life youth activities. I myself attended the March for Life for the very first time, and I met several other old-time pro-lifers, first-timer attendees like myself -- what brought us out this year?

I call what I am experiencing a "swirling of spiritual forces". Folks of a different bent might call it a matter of political timing, a point in a social movement when the scales begin to tip in the direction of justice and away from the accepted wisdom that certain injustices are necessary or the body politic cannot thrive. I am thinking here of slavery, segregation, women's disenfranchisement -- three social movements of our own nation which fought an uphill battle for as long as social forces existed that could not see past the claims of the ones whose difficulties in this ever-difficult experiment we call life were alleviated by the imposition of legal injustice.

But my forte is spirituality, not politics, and my wisdom and experience are in the realm of the human spirit and its relationship to the divine. And so despite the fact that spiritual pundits are far less respected than political or social ones, I will speak freely in the realm of my own experience and wisdom.

Something is happening with abortion in America. We as a nation are reaching a tipping point. Is this the subject that will tip us over into an apocalypse, with all the other issues that we have to fear - the collapse of the dollar, the acrimony of the political environment, the blood sports of gouging each other over issues of marriage, sexuality, and family?

Who knows? I'm no Delphic oracle, not even a Cassandra... she the most tragic of all Greek prophetesses.

However, I have shed tears. Many tears. Salty, streaming tears, tears that shook my body, over the past two weeks. My tears are as telling to me as my joys.

All of this is just to preface a few links that have to do with the morality of the pro-life sting operations carried out by Lila Rose's Live Action group against Planned Parenthood. Lila Rose is one of my hero's. Yet because she is not fictional, and because she is not a figure of history but of right here and now -- my time! -- I am troubled by the fact that she is my hero.

For what is a hero? That's a topic way too broad for now. But, simply put, here is the question being raised and debated in the Catholic and pro-life blogosphere:

Is it moral to lie to Planned Parenthood?

I don't have time to untangle the links, but there's a good discussion started by Mark Shea at National Catholic Register. Read the discussions AND the comments.

The pro-life world doesn't need to agree on this, I don't think. It does need to not pull itself part due to the controversy. Everyone who is involved with the laudatory goal of exposing the basic wrong of Planned Parenthood's efforts needs to educate themselves, ruminate, pray, and be prepared to act with extraordinary charity and clarity over the coming months. Something is happening.

Can You Life for a Good Cause? by Mark Shea, at National Catholic Register and on his own blog, Catholic and Enjoying It.

Commenter Dale Price:
It sits in the same range of behavior as undercover police work, investigative reporting and whistleblowing. I am extremely curious to see whether or not moral theologians have weighed in on this.blockquote.

I guess I feel about Live Action the same way I feel about Chris Hansen's "To Catch a Predator" series on NBC. Given the systemic refusal of governmental agencies to regulate abortion clinics, this is the next best thing.

Truth, Love, and Live Action by Christopher O. Tollefsen. "The pro-life cause must be advanced by truth and by love, and it must be willing to engage in self-criticism when it fails to meet its own exacting standards."

It's a sin to lie, even to Planned Parenthood, by Reginaldus, moniker for a Catholic priest with a STB in Sacred Thelogy and a STL in Dogmatic Theology, over at The New Theological Movement :

Some (even Fr. Frank Pavone, on Catholic Connection with Teresa Tameo on the morning of February 2nd ) will claim that it is morally justifiable to lie to Planned Parenthood in order to expose the illegal activities of that organization. They will claim that the lie is justifiable because we are “at war” with Planned Parenthood. Here we make a twofold response: first, even in war, it is sinful to lie; second, we are not at war with Planned Parenthood. War is a conflict not between individuals or even between various groups of individuals, but between nations. The pro-life movement, technically, is not at war with the culture of death – if we were at war, it would be justifiable for individuals to kill abortion doctors; but it is not, since we are not at war. We are in a great struggle, a struggle which is far worse and far more costly than any war which the world has yet faced.

I think Abby Johnson's book Unplanned is a game-changer. I think her story shows the basic solidity of 40 Days for Life and its approach -- "by their fruits you will know them." Another 40 Days for Life campaign begins March 9. I am again a regional facilitator.

Truth and lies. Media. Truth in media. What's it all about, Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live? What's it all about, when you sort it out, Alfie? Are we meant to take more than we give? Or are we meant to be kind? And if only fools are kind, Alfie, then I guess it is wise to be cruel. And if life belongs only to the strong, Alfie, what will you lend on an old golden rule? As sure as I believe there's a heaven above, Alfie, I know there's something much more, something even non-believers can believe in. I believe in love, Alfie. Without true love we just exist, Alfie.

Can it be that when the movie Alfie came out, in 1966, the chickens came home to roost for our hero in a shocking abortion scene? 45 years later, and we have few sensibilities left to shock.

Rolling rolling rolling, keep those doggies rolling

2011-02-07T08:26:00.005-05:00

I am overdosing on polemics at the moment. I recognize within me an anger towards people I usually call "pro-choice" but am creeping towards throwing in the towel and labeling "pro-abortion". Yet, I am awash in a sea of relationships with pro-choice folks. My own mother was pro-choice. Some of my children are. Close friends are.

For what are we, human beings, if not perpetually awash in non-tidiness?

Oh, and I've got a miserable cold also. Ironically, two days after I received the blessing of the throat on St. Blaise's Day, I came down with the worst sore throat of the season. A reward for my hubris, or (as Bill says), I'd likely be in the E.R. without it. What's so common about the cold? And if they ever cure it, what will happen to the world?

Time to turn to the pleasures and conundrums of fiction. I will be hosting a blog tour of various newly published offerings of some of the cool writers I met at the Catholic Writers Conference in August. So... time to get into Fiction Mode.

I read The Man Who Was Thursday by Chesterton on my Kindle. I'd tried to read this a few years ago with no luck. Chesterton's fiction is like Flannery O'Connor's for me - I respect it because so many respectable people like it, but I've never really enjoyed it. It baffles me as to why not.

I found myself really missing the physicality of printed word on paper, bound together into a physical book, for the first time since I've gotten my Kindle. I got caught up in the story, but as it spun out into a wilder and wilder nightmare (as Chesterton labeled it), I lost my exhilaration. Then afterwards, I went and read Amazon reviews and the Wikipedia entry, and wanted to try it again.

For someone who loves fiction as much as I do, I have an obtuseness that I don't understand. For truly transcendant reading pleasure, I read poetry, theology and scripture. In fiction, I like the pleasure of the weird. The Man Who Was Thursday was definitely weird. But not weird enough? I really need to figure this out. The fiction that comes closest to the joy of poetry, scripture and theology for me is Stephen King. Weird, bloody, peopled with self-centered, mean-minded people with teeny tiny flecks of love creeping in.

Oh, and Leonard Cohen's music. It's awesome, Stephen King-like music. Judee Sills also. But "Anthem" is playing on my L. Cohen pandora station right now:

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack, in everything.
That's how the light gets in. That's how the light gets in.

We asked for signs, the signs were sent
The birth betrayed, the marriage spent
Yeah, the widowhood of every government
Signs for all to see

I can't run no more with that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places say their
prayers out loud
But they've summoned, they've summoned up a thundercloud
And they're going to hear from me

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Six of my children, with a couple of grans thrown in for good measure.

2011-01-25T09:56:00.009-05:00

Okay, in keeping me my new new year's resolution, MORE PICS OF MY FAMILY!

Gabe holding little Zeke, with a very young Ruth and Wade looking on-- they might be meeting their Alabama cousin for the first time!

Ish, Ruth, Wade and Dave, visiting Owen in the hospital. Serious time.

Reetie and Bob,after Owen got better. Or maybe I just grabbed this for my Owen video to represent after he got better! I don't really have a time stamp on the photo.

Sarah and Em - bears repeating. Or is that bulls repeating??

Ish taking that same bull by the horns. I think this was when they all went into NYC to see a Colbert Report taping.

I can't find any pix on my hard drive of Walter, and I wouldn't post pictures of Mike without his permission or he might not accept my FB request. Oh, wait.... So this is the closest Walter pic I have, it's from when he was abducted by aliens a few years ago. That's his white pickup truck in the background.

Little Altars - Take 1

2011-01-25T09:44:00.007-05:00

I've relocated my prayer space from my sunny glass foyer -- too trafficked -- to an upstairs room. My daughter-in-law Maria is going to help me with the design. I'll say it before anybody else does -- yeah, I know the lamp with the ivory fringed shawl looks a little bit like a bordello decoration, but maybe that goes with my thirty-something goal of being the patron saint of sex. I gave it up (at least saying it publically) when my husband told me that people who weren't devoutly Catholic wouldn't know it meant conjugal intimacy. Not to mention it would embarrass my kids if I'd kept it up as they were growing older. Oh wait, I might've embarrassed them already.

I love my grandchildren - more pix!

2011-01-25T09:26:00.004-05:00

Rosalyn bullying Ish. She's so happy she's not the youngest in the pecking order!

Pirate Owen. Arrgghh!

Ghoulish Wade. Or possibly Zombie Wade. What's the difference? I have forgotten my monster categories.

The Danyo pix go back to Halloween. The baby pix are at least a month old, prolly more.

Baby Ish, and more pix to follow. 2011 will be the year I get over my aversion to catching the flight of time!

2011-01-25T08:45:00.004-05:00

I don't post nearly enough family pix on my blog. Adding to my New Year's Resolutions -- going to get interested in photographic displays of the loves of my life in 2011. This is baby Ish Stabosz and his cuddly friend, Gilbert the Goose. See his mommy's blog, Life as a Trigonometric Function (*Cleverest**Name-Pun**Ever*) for more pix.

Revisiting my New Year's resolutions

2011-01-25T06:30:00.003-05:00

Okay. Time to check in on my New Year's Resolutions. Most years go by without me making any, but this time I tried. How am I doing so far?

1. Dispose of three unneeded items from the house, each day.

- Doing pretty well with this one. Many days I get rid of more than three items. Some days I forget. Think I'll start on the garage in February, to kick things up a notch.

2. For every one non-grocery item I bring into the house, take one item out. So at least I am not gaining more junk as I try to clean out the existing clutter.

- Ditto for this one. For awhile, I was rigorously counting every item in and matching it with an equal number of items out. I've stopped the rigor but am adhering to the principle. But I think I'd feel better if I went back to the rigor. Order is soothing. It relaxes the brain and fools me into thinking I have more control over life than I really do. Measurement -- as in measuring progress or marking the steps along the way of achieving some goal -- reassures the chaotic aspect of the interior self. Yes ma'am, I am moving forward and not just going around in circles.

3. Write 100 words of fiction a day.

- *BUZZ* Nope not a chance. 100 words is a piece of cake - I've already written 200+ in this entry alone. I deliberately set a low number because I just wanted to limber up. But I don't have a desire to write fiction. I think the only reason I made the resolution is because Bill and I have an ongoing joke about what we'll do with the money when I write that big blockbuster novel that I have in me. But right now? It's non-fiction writing all the way. That's my modus communicandus these days. Switching over to maybe a new writing goal. Or maybe having none. I've always enjoyed the freedom to write or not write, following my lovely and gracious muse who finds me great paths to poke around in, without the onus of deadlines or goals. I like it. I am a dilettante author. Until otherwise moved.

A 2-fer 4 u -"Blood Money" comes to Theater N in Wilmington, + a plug for Spirit Juice Studios!

2011-01-14T12:51:00.007-05:00

"BLOOD MONEY" SCREENING AT THEATER N

Tuesday, January 18; 7pm

Next Saturday marks the 38th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. In anticipation and preparation for the March for Life, Delaware Right to Life will present the documentary, "Blood Money" at Theater N in Wilmington on Tuesday, Jan. 18 at 7pm.

Theater N is located in the Nemours building at 11th & Tatnall Sts.

View the trailer!

***POSSIBLE VISIT FROM DIRECTOR DAVID KYLE!!***

Blood Money is a documentary film narrated by Dr. Alveda King, which exposes the truth behind the abortion industry.

The film examines the history of abortion in America. From the inception of Planned Parenthood and the profitability of abortion clinics, to Roe v. Wade, to the denial of when life begins, the fight to save the lives of innocent babies, and the devastating effects it has had on the women who have exercised this "choice."

Tickets are $10/person and can be purchased online at the door! Proceeds benefit DRTL.

http://www.theatren.org/Films/2011/January-2011/Bloodmoney

For more information, contact Theater N or Nicole at Nicole@derighttolife.org or 302-650-8942.

I will see the whole film for the first time on Tuesday, but I have seen parts of it already and these actually whetted my appetite for a definitive pro-life documentary about Planned Parenthood. David Kyle has done a very good job as a neophyte director in assembling together some very cogent material that Planned Parenthood prefers to keep quiet about exactly how invested they are both philosophically and monetarily in the abortion industry. However, the film itself shows the marks of its director's inexperience, and I would love to have access to the hours of film stock he left on the cutting room floor. I would give it to Spirit Juice Studios and see what they could craft out of it.

Spirit Juice is the production company that is making the documentary about Blessed Alberione, the Founder of the Paulines. Their crew came with us on our October Pauline pilgrimage to Italy.

Here's a 51-second Christmas video from Spirit Juice,touching on the topic of unplanned pregnancy. It's a "nice" video, one that cutely uses the same type of trailer motif that you see in Blood Money as well as many Hollywood trailers.

Here's Spirit Juice's 49-second trailer for the film To Be Born , a 15-minute short coming out this year in three languages. It's not so nice, because not every conception has the outcome to which it was oriented. I am looking forward to this film. If I had half a million dollars hanging around, or even a quarter of that, I'd give it to Danny and Rob and have them make me a film about Planned Parenthood. They are the most chilling non-profit organization I know of. And do you know any other non-profit organization that brings in so much cash each week that they can afford to hire an armored truck service to haul it away to a bank?

New Year's Resolutions for 2011

2011-01-02T20:14:00.003-05:00

Sarah Roeser and Emily Stabosz

I don't usually do New Year's resolutions, but today I think I'll take the bull by the horns and make some resolutions for 2011:

1. Dispose of 3 items I don't need, every day.

2. For each item I bring into the house besides food or drink, dispose of one item.

3. Write 100 words of day of fiction.

We'll see how it goes. Maybe I should set an alarm for a month from now, to see if I've done the usual thing and abandoned my resolutions.

Flannery's Fabulous Christian Realism

2010-12-27T08:03:00.008-05:00

My husband gave me "Flannery O'Connor: Spiritual Writings" for Christmas and I think I am in love. I have never really "gotten" Flannery O'Connor as a fiction writer. As with my feelings towards St. Thomas Aquinas, whom Flannery loved, I have respected and admired from afar without really understanding what all the fuss was about.

I must be getting wiser in my old age. Last month, for the first time ever, I read one of Aquinas' propositions all the way through; and, at the end, a stubborn door of perception in my mind blew off its hinges and light flooded in. What a magnificent insight into divine reality St. Thomas' mind managed to communicate through pure reason!

I am now finding Flannery a kindred spirit, a soul-mate in her view of the intricacy with which a Catholic writer treads the pathways of a society that does not see the Catholic Church in its beauty as the Mystical Body of Christ but instead views it as fascistic, repressive, and a totally human organization with only delusions of divine institution.

In a letter to Betty Hester (identified only as "A" in The Habit of Being), O'Connor writes:

"I can't concede that I'm a fascist," wrote Flannery. "I am wondering why you convict me of believing in the use of force? It must be because you connect the Church with a belief in the use of force; but the Church is a mystical body which cannot, does not, believe in the use of force (in the sense of forcing conscience, denying the rights of conscience, etc.). I know all her hair-raising history, of course, but principle must be separated from policy. Policy and politics generally go contrary to princple. I in principle do not believe in the use of force, but I might well find myself using it, in which case I would have to convict myself of sin."

The problem for Rae as for Flannery as for all strongly Catholic minds is that the Church we love is a supernatural entity created to carry and communicate the knowledge and grace of Christ's Redemption through time, administered and populated by sinners whose understanding and acceptance of Redemption can be seriously warped and even deliberately perverted.

One bad apple can spoil a whole barrel. Bad apples in the body of Christ can spoil whole batches of potential disciples.

"Of course I do not connect the Church exclusively with the Patriarchal Ideal. The death of such would not be a death of the Church, which is only now a seed and a Divine one. The things that you think she will be added to, will be added to her. In the end we visualize the same thing but I see it as happening through Christ and His Church."

The italics are mine. I think that this is a truth that I very much need to keep in mind as I tiptoe through the minefields of today's culture wars: In the end both sides visualize the same thing. Utopia, in a Platonic sense, or the new heavens and the new earth, in a Christian sense -- a society of endless freedom, bounty, love and creativity for all. I, like Flannery, see it happening through Christ and His Church. But others see it happening through the elimination of the Church and faith in Christ ("Imagine there's no heaven... and no religion too.")

It is not the bad apples that cause the biggest difficulty. Bad apples are easy to spot and to blame. And to use as an excuse for avoiding the larger difficulty, which is that of faith in "all that is, visible and invisible" (as we state in the Creed). The Incarnation is an obstacle greater than the Redemption. Here is where I find that Flannery is my true soul-mate. When Christ heard our pleas and healed my grandson Owen of severe brain injury, He worked the same kind of miracle in front of my eyes that He worked in Palestine during his own lifetime. And, as I have meditated on that healing, and as I compiled the Dossier on Owen that I sent to Rome, I gained an understanding of "miracle" that Flannery O'Connor expresses as I have never been able to express:

"To see Christ as God and man is probably no more difficult today than it has always been, even if today there seem to be more reasons to doubt. For you it may be a matter of not being able to accept what you call a suspension of the laws of the flesh and the physical, but for my part I think that when I know what the laws of the flesh and the physical really are, then I will know what God is. We know them as we see them, not as God sees them. For me, it is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical. Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws. I am always astonished at the emphasis the Church puts on the body. It is not the soul she says that will rise but the body, glorified. I have always thought that purity was the most mysterious of the virtues, but it occurs to me that it would never have entered the human consciousness to conceive of purity if we were not to look forward to a resurrection of the body, which will be flesh and spirit united in peace, in the way they were in Christ. The resurrection of Christ seems the high point in the law of nature."

That is exactly how I have come to see Owen's healing -- as a suspension of the laws of death, decay and destruction that took my sons Simon and Eric to early graves. Jesus spoke to his disciples about the power of faith, "I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him." Such faith existed, in the hearts of those who prayed for Owen, both those on earth and those in heaven. And the death, decay and destruction that are temporary effects of the Fall were suspended, and the true physical laws revealed in the Incarnation and Resurrection re-instated, when Christ in the power of Faith asked His Father to break into our world and heal Owen.

Flannery O'Connor describes herself as many things -- a "hillbilly Thomist" and a "hermit novelist", among others. My favorite of her self-labelings is that of "Christian realist." To the secular mind, the phrase itself is a conundrum if not a downright oxymoron. But Flannery O'Connor gets it in the same way that Frank Sheed did in "Theology and Sanity". A mind that sees the world as God has revealed it is realistic. A mind that does not is living in fantasy. And not in a good way. Flannery is providing much light to my questioning, questing mind this Christmas season.

The Moonstone - danged absorbing mystery fiction!

2010-12-07T11:47:00.004-05:00

(Just finished The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, and reviewed it on Amazon. Some of this review refers to other Amazon reviews. You can find them all at The Moonstone's listing in Amazon. )

The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins: A pleasurable immersion in Victorian England, a romantic mystery

4.0 out of 5 stars

December 7, 2010

By Rae Stabosz "stabosz" (Newark, DE) - See all my reviews

A previous reviewer notes that he became a fan of Victorian literature in his 70's. I am in my 60's, and have become a fan of the same due to my recent purchase of a Kindle. I am a lifelong reader. I bought the Kindle so I could pack a single "book" for a recent trip to Rome, rather than loading down my luggage with 6 or 7 as is usual on a trip. Then, being frugal (and the trip to Rome costing a pretty penny), I started downloading free books to my new Kindle. The great majority of these are works that are in the public domain, many of them from the Victorian era. Using this method, I downloaded a bunch of them, and to date have read Dracula (excellent!), The Home Life of Poe (like an extended People magazine interview), and The Moonstone (see herein).

I read Wilkie Collins as a girl, but so long ago that I don't remember if it was Woman in White, or The Moonstone, or both which I read. The Moonstone, I must confess, is a thoroughly engaging piece of mystery writing.

Collins uses the device of having the narrative told by several different first person narrators. In this, the book is like Dracula, whose story is told completely in letters, diary/journal entries, and newspaper clippings. In The Moonstone, the narratives are written after the mystery has been solved, to fulfill a request that each person who had witnessed key moments having to do with the mystery put down in writing only what they witnessed and observed. The individuals of whom this request is made then consult not just their memories but also their own diaries and household records, to put together testimony written after the fact which maintains the urgency and freshness of the original sources, with a bit of reflection by each narrator which nevertheless never provides plot spoilers.

Other reviewers have written about Gabriel Betteridge, the valued and loyal major domo of the Verinder household, and about Miss Clack, the hilariously clueless spinster cousin who is a Peerless Evangelizer of the Christian Gospel in her own mind. These narrators are indeed wonderful. From Betteridge, we receive our best portrait of Sergeant Cuff -- "the mighty Cuff" -- the police detective hired to discover who stole the Moonstone after the local authorities botch the job badly. Althought Sergeant Cuff gets to narrate a very small part of the story himself, it is in Betteridge's chronicle that we get the pleasure of making the acquaintance of a detective who has the idiosyncrasies of Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Nero Wolfe et al, even though he is not as central to the story as those worthies.

Ezra Jennings is a melancholy character who enters the story in its later chapters. It was his narrative that I found most exceptionally stirring. Jennings is a physician's assistant with a checkered past and a foreign demeanor, treated as an outsider and trusted by few.

Rosanna Spears, a hunch-backed maid taken into the Verinder household after a stint in a woman's reformatory, is another melancholy character whose actions stem from motives that transcend class or station in life. I confess that in her story I found myself angriest at the rigid class distinctions that in every generation predispose some folks to fortune and some to misfortune - the Victorians had no monopoly on this any more than do we. Rosanna suffered the double whammy of poverty and feminine ugliness. If Rachel Verinder has been a servant but retained all of her beauty, her fate would have gone better than Rosanna's, just as Rosanna would have had a better (if not happier) life if she had been an heiress with a humb-back.

The Moonstone has all the ingredients of a delicious mystery tale -- adventure, romance, a MacGuffin that is the priceless jewel of a centuries-long-worshiped idol, murder, theft, passion, coincidence misinterpreted, and Robinson Crusoe. What more could a mystery lover want?

Investment stuff

2010-12-05T08:55:00.003-05:00

I wrote about this Catholic Investor blog last year, but want to recommend it again:

http://catholicinvestor.blogspot.com/

The author has started analyzing stocks in detail, which is very helpful to an investor like me who reads the theories but has a hard time applying them in my own efforts at analyzing a company.

Another hint for any investors out there in the audience: Google "yahoo finance" and "longtimefollower" regularly, a couple of times a week at least. longtimefollower is an investor of many years experience and excellent integrity. He practices value investing. I have made a bit of money following his insights, and so have others (as evidenced in the Yahoo finance forums). I know him personally and can vouch that he's a good guy and a socially conscious investor. He isn't a practicing Catholic so there won't be a one to one correspondence with Catholic social issues (for instance, I don't know how he feels about companies that do embryonic stem cell research). But by and large his ethics are in sync with the Church's. He's a shrewd investor. Shout out to him and thanks, if he reads my blog.

Many folks think that there's going to be a massive dip in the market December 15, if the question of the Bush tax cuts isn't resolved. Anybody want to venture an opinion? I hate to lose all the gains of recent months.

I'm with Alberione, and so is my Kindle!

2010-12-04T19:19:00.001-05:00

Sr. Wendy Beckett in front of portrait of Bl. Alberione

Sr. Margaret Charles mentioned obliquely, on the bus one day in Rome, that some of the Italian sisters were working on a digital database of Father Alberione's writings. She wasn't sure where to find them. So I went hunting today and found a treasure!

Check out http://www.alberione.org/operaomnia/operaomnia_opere.php . It will blow your mind!! Alberione texts in Italian, Spanish, Brasilian and English!

Most of the texts put online so far are in Italian. It is clear by the unlinked listings that this is an ongoing work that will see more and more of the Founder's writings available to one and all.

Here is what's up now in English:

ABUNDANTES DIVITIAE GRATIAE SUAE, 1953 (Charismatic history of the Pauline Family)

DONEC FORMETUR CHRISTUS IN VOBIS, 1932 (Until Christ Be Formed in You)

UT PERFECTUS SIT HOMO DEI (Instructions from a month-long retreat given by Blessed Alberione to senior SSP members in Ariccia, Rome in 1960)

The whole site, http://www.alberione.org/ is a wonderful resource. Most of it is in Italian, but you can throw text into an Italian to English translator like the one at http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ to see approximate translations of things like the FAQ.

The text files are offered in PDF and Word format. PDF can be downloaded and read on a Kindle, according to the Kindle manual, although I've not tried that yet.

At any rate, I say: Go, Go, Alberione! I love the Founder's writings and am elated to have discovered this.

(Now, it could very well be that this is old news for everybody, and that Sister Margaret or one of the other sisters sent word out about this project long ago. If so, please just indulge or excuse my enthusiasm, as I plead information overload.)

Rachel's Contrition: The Divine Passive in Fiction

2010-12-04T11:25:00.004-05:00

My trip to Rome (pilgrimage that is! very Alberionian!) left me way behind on blogging and other fun endeavors, so I'm playing catch-up.

If you're looking to contribute to the care and feeding of those new writers who are part of the Catholic renaissance of letters, here's a book you could get. Perfect Christmas gift or indulgence for yourself. I reviewed this for the Catholic fiction list but since some of you don't read that, here's my review:

Rachel's Contrition tackles the grim topic of the death of a child. Knowing this
beforehand, I came to the book with a sense of dread. Not only is this every
mother’s nightmare, but it is one that I have personally experienced. An author
would have to be exceptionally skilled to get me to enjoy reading about another
mother’s grief. And yes, I do mean enjoy. There is a mystery to both the reading
and writing of fiction, before which we can only stand amazed and grateful. How
can the imaginative rendering of other people’s pain release the powerful
pleasures of fiction?

Michelle Buckman manages the trick. As I write
this review in November of 2010, Rachel's Contrition is #6 on the top 10 list of
Amazon's Women's Literature & Fiction category, & #1 in Women's Fiction
> Mothers & Children . This is a novel that has excellent reviews and
wide appeal. It features a Catholic understanding of the moral universe. I found
it marvelously entertaining and original.

Rachel Winters has scratched
her way up from a childhood of poverty and neglect to revel in an ideal life --
marriage to doctor Joseph Sinclair Winters, Jr. (Sinclair), a privileged life of
family and rank, and mother to toddler Seth and beautiful baby Caroline. Then,
in the snap of a finger, Rachel's world is shattered by tragedy. She finds
herself shut out of Sinclair's life, able to see Seth only on carefully arranged
visits, and teetering on the brink of madness by the loss of her daughter
Caroline. Worst of all, she cannot forgive Sinclair for his part in Caroline’s
death.

Rachel lives out her new, numb life in a pool house she rents
from Colette, the only one of her wealthy friends who will have anything to do
with her in her altered situation. Her other former friends, wives of Sinclair’s
business associates, all seem to shrink from Rachel and to take Sinclair's side
against her. The only person who does not snub Rachel is Lilly, Colette’s
troubled teenaged stepdaughter. Lilly harbors her own secret pain, and comes and
goes in the pool house like a sardonic wraith. She leaves little things for
Rachel to find, like a book by St. Therese of Lisieux. Despite her annoyance at
Lilly, Rachel stirs herself from lethargy to try and understand the motivations
of her disdainful, cryptic, uninvited guest.

A murder thickens the plot,
but also provides a bit of a misstep, nudging the narrative into the mystery
genre, where convention dictates that the murder itself move front and center.
This does not happen. It is as if the author was afraid that she could not hold
her audience with the story of Rachel’s unraveling alone. But a murder whose
solving is only a sub-plot undermines the conventions of mystery writing, and is
a distraction here. The main event is Rachel’s contrition, and the noun itself
intrigues us. For what is she contrite? Fate has dealt her one blow after
another. Is she not more sinned against than sinning?

It is here that
Buckman shines, in the narrating of Rachel’s journeying in the realms of human
pain and the discovery of what – or rather Who – lies at the heart of that
darkness. God has His own story arc in Rachel’s Contrition, but it plays out so
subtly that the reader is barely aware that another actor has taken the stage.

Biblical scholar Joachim Jeremias once described a verbal structure
found in the gospels and virtually nowhere else in ancient writings. It is known
as the divine passive. This is a way that Jesus, when he speaks, uses the
passive voice to describe an action whose subject would be God if it were put
into the active voice. The best-known examples are in the beatitudes. If you
were to reconstruct the beatitudes in active voice, the subject would be God and
the direct object the persons acted on. Thus, "Blessed are they who mourn, for
they will be comforted" becomes "Blessed are they who mourn, for [there is One
Who] will comfort them." “Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for
righteousness, for they will be filled" becomes "Blessed are those that hunger
and thirst for righteousness, for [there is One Who] will fill them."

Learning about the divine passive has given me an appreciation for
Jesus' delicacy and reserve in describing the activity of God. Writers of
Christian fiction sometimes show less discretion in describing how God works in
the human soul. Efforts to depict the details of God’s wooing of human
protagonists can fail in ways that range from overly florid descriptions of
mystical experience to exaggerated scenes of religious conversion .

Rachel’s Contrition works an intriguing variation on the divine passive.
Every journey of the spirit requires a guide or a guidebook, and St. Therese’s
Story of a Soul provides Rachel with hers. When she picks up the book that Lilly
has left for her, Rachel is not drawn to the joyful side of the saint. The pain,
loss and darkness of spirit that characterize so much of Therese Martin’s short
life resonate with Rachel. Rachel has hungered for love, and finds an echoing
hunger in Therese Martin’s experience of life. She reads the saint’s
autobiography in bits and pieces, finding herself attracted to the strategies
St. Therese devises for handling the disturbances, slights, and anguish of her
everyday life. In St. Therese, Rachel finds a kindred spirit, but with a
difference. Therese, unlike Rachel, does not shrink from other people because of
her own pain but engages herself fully in the world around her.

The
reader doesn’t need to be Catholic or even Christian to share Rachel’s curiosity
about St. Therese’s “little way.” As with the divine passive in the gospels,
Rachel’s discovery of the practice of mindfully offering up of the events of
everyday life for the sake of love leads to knowledge of the unnamed God.

There is much to love in this book. Buckman does a good job fleshing out
Sinclair, Seth, and even Caroline, who barely appears but whose fleeting
materializations in Rachel’s memory evoke a lively presence. Also, the Catholic
priesthood shines, in a rare look into how priests really minister to persons
who come to their churches with inchoate needs.

This is an engaging,
solid entry from the new Chisel and Cross imprint of the Sophia Institute Press.
Chisel and Cross seeks to offer contemporary fiction that will help readers
discover how to be Catholics in the modern world. As their website notes, “We
are aiming to build up the pool of good Catholic fiction books… Contemporary
Catholics have been treated to a few good stories in modern culture, but most of
those stories are not about people like themselves, just people who happen to
have a passing resemblance to them because of accidental morality. We want to
give Catholics, particularly young Catholics, stories featuring characters they
can relate to and love.”

Rachel’s Contrition fits the bill.

Verbum Domini: Pope Benedict XVI exhorts us apostolically on the Word of God!

2010-11-15T15:42:00.002-05:00

Deacon Keith Fournier begins his November 14 article on the release of Pope Benedict XVI's apostolic exhortation "Verbum Domini" in a way that makes me want to read the rest of the article and the entire exhortation itself! He begins:

Verbum Domini is Masterful, Mystical, and Missionary. What is clear from beginning to end is that the current occupant of the Chair of Peter is a theologian of the highest order. He must have delighted his many students as 'Professor Ratzinger'. This exhortation gives us all a chance to join them and be taught by this extraordinary Pope. With the skills of an excellent teacher, Pope Benedict XVI takes the reader through one of the finest presentations of the Catholic teaching on the Sacred Scripture I have read.

Read the rest of Deacon Fournier's article.

Or jump right to the text of "Verbum Domini" itself. Caution - it's not for the faint of heart, being 194 pages of text followed by a nice index. Deacon Fournier printed it out, put it into a 3-ring binder, and keeps it next to his "prayer chair".

Much More Than a Baby Dies in Abortion

2010-11-09T21:04:00.005-05:00

It's a bit of a jump from this image to the topic, but putting

Dr. Patrick's picture up made me yawn & I didn't want yucky pix.

Dr. John Patrick presents "Much More Than a Baby Dies in Abortion."

Monday, November 8 · 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Perkins Student Center - University of Delaware
325 Academy Street
Newark, DE

Dr. Patrick is a retired Medical Doctor and Associate Professor in Clinical Nutrition in the Department of Biochemistry and Paediatrics at the U. of Ottawa. He lectures around the world about controversial moral dilemmas in medicine, culture, and the integration of religion and science. He is one of the Founders and is the current President of Augustine College, Ottawa. During his academic career, Dr. Patrick did extensive research in Central Africa, Britain, the West Indies and Canada, and is an expert on childhood malnutrition.

It was a fascinating lecture. I asked Dr. Patrick afterwards if he had this online, and he said that unbeknownst to him, his wife had indeed put some stuff online that he hasn't yet seen. He discovered this after he gave a talk and someone asked him, as I did, if his thoughts were online. He said "No," only to have a student say, "Excuse me, but yes, there is a link on Augustine College's* web page." He says he still hasn't checked but takes the student's word for it. I did check. His web site is http://www.johnpatrick.ca/index.htm and on the left, under Papers you can find some of his work in both written and spoken version. I would absolutely recommend settling in and listening to one of the mp3 files over the written material. He wanders quite a bit when he speaks, and the written articles seem to be transcriptions of the talks rather than articles edited for publication.

Dr. Patrick started out as a biochemist and a medical doctor. He was specializing in the practice of infectious diseases in the mid-60's, and became familiar with the phenomenon of pregnant women who had contracted rubella measles coming to see him. Rubella causes severe birth defects in about 90% of the babies carried by infected women. He said he did not consciously think of himself as being engaged in abortion -- in those days, the word itself carried a horrendous connotation (kids born since Roe v Wade have no conception of the stigma attached to the word). As a rational, compassionate man, the way he would handle such cases would be to consult with the woman, tell her that unfortunately because of the rubella things had gone terribly wrong with the pregnancy, but if she wanted a fresh start, he could put her in hospital, take care of the problem, and she could then start over with a clean slate in trying to have a child. He said every woman he talked to like that always agreed, and he would do follow the lead of other doctors and record
performing a "D and C", since abortion was illegal.

Bess McAneny, who practiced as a nurse in the 60's in an Ob\Gyn wing of a hospital, afterwards said that she knew what he meant because there was one doctor, the chief of staff, who had a special room where he would take patients, and invariably his records would show up with a greater than average number of "D and Cs". Bess said she wondered why he had to do so many D and C's on such young patients, and why he had his own reserved room that nobody else used, but it never occurred to her that abortions were going on. Dr. Patrick confirmed that doctors all knew about such practices and covered one another.

Dr. Patrick said what happened to him was that although he left that practice and went on to other things, it stuck in his mind. Then abortion became legal. About 20 years ago, he said, his wife went off to work in a refugee camp in Africa for two years, and he became a widower of sorts. Having lots of time on his hands, he decided to think about the question of abortion, something he had not done at all during the years he was involved with it. He asked himself the question, What line of reasoning would I have to embrace in order to clearly hold the belief that
abortion was ethical? What else might flow from that line of reasoning?

This got him to thinking about personhood. What responsibilities do we owe all human persons? Protection from harm, particularly protection of the weak and innocent, is a basic responsibility that society owes to its members. If a human being isn't innocent in utero , then when is it innocent? He talked about how it is a clear fact that conception is the point in time that each human being is stamped with a unique DNA identifier, so obviously an unborn child is a human being. So why is a human person not identified at the point of conception? He discussed the various definitions philosophers have come up with for human personhood, and concluded that every one of them left him and all others who now enjoy the protection of the law at risk of suddenly becoming non-persons.

This is what he meant by titling the talk, "So much more than a baby dies in abortion". He said his reasoning lead him to realize that the legalization of abortion was not an exercise of justice but the exercise of raw judicial power, of promoting the rights of the strong over the rights of the weak. In order to do this, personhood had to be disconnected from being. That way, our consciences as a society would allow us to kill human beings who were not human persons. But of course, this means that we can kill any human being who does not meet the criteria we have set for persohood. Logically, abortion opens the gates to euthanasia, just as its initial foes predicted back in the
70’s. And indeed, despite protests at the time that of course no such thing would happen, voluntary euthanasia is indeed now available across the globe. Also, a woman who is given the choice to kill her child in utero can hardly be denied the choice to kill herself when she likes, thus leading to the logical legitimatization of assisted suicide. The rationale is still being used, in the discussion of euthanizing of disabled infants, but the most recent legal judgments have denied the application of this logic to the legitimatization of such euthanasia. In Dr. Patrick’s opinion, the U.S. courts who have ruled against euthanizing of disabled infants, have chosen to deliberately ignore the logic of the arguments in favor of it based on precedents set by abortion, assisted suicide, and euthanasia rulings because they know that American society is not yet ready to accept it.

He talked about a lot more than this, about the disintegration of western culture because of the marginalizing of Judaeo-Christian thought, traditions, literature and history. He faults the churches for not teaching their flocks to think. He said Protestants need to think where they now feel, and feel where they now think; Catholics, he says, are intellectually strong and know all the 100 dollar words but need to learn how to preach the word of God, and not just in the short homilies at Mass. He said the people that are doing the best work in the area of the decaying of western culture are atheistic secular Jews, and he named a few who have influenced him (can’t remember the names, Bess McAneny has them). He said an honest atheist is a treasure, because they cut through the bullsh*t on both sides and are the ones who proclaim loudest that the marginalization of traditional Jewish and Christian culture (which encompasses Hellenic culture) is having a deadly effect on the western world.

Dr. Patrick spoke like the college professor he is - witty and intellectual, but with a wry sense of how spiritually vapid academia can be and how important it is for academics like himself to avoid the temptations available to all professors to spin their own egos instead of truth. He believes in objective truth and says that moral relativists too believe in objective truth, for when they declare that “all points of view are equally valid”, they are making a statement that they wish you to believe as true, even as they believe it to be objectively and universally true.
He came from a blue collar background, the first in his family to be educated. He said he lost his faith at university, and since then he has seen the same thing happen over and over again to other students. That's why Augustine College exists, to stem the tide. He says blue collar working people the world over are the ones that have the strongest, liveliest faith, that intellectual pursuit these days tends to beat it out of you.

It was an excellent lecture. Left me with many thoughts.

*John Patrick turns out to be co-founder and president of Augustine College, which is the fruit of some years' discussion between him and some friends about how the lack of education on the "great ideas" is wreaking havoc in western culture. Basically, Augustine College appears to be a "great books" institution with a strong emphasis on philosophy as well as literature.

Want more? Go to http://www.johnpatrick.ca/index.htm and on the left, under Papers you can find some of his work in both written and spoken version. Listen to the talks rather than read them. Well worth the time.

So you Want to Get a PhD in the Humanities

2010-11-04T11:00:00.000-04:00

This one is for you, GF in New Jersey!

Love,

Rae

Confessions of a Pilgrim: Back to the Source

2010-11-01T08:37:00.002-04:00

The 2010 Pauline Cooperator pilgrimage, "In the Footsteps of St. Paul", ended two days ago on October 30. I did not keep a journal or take photographs -- Phivan was the picture-taker par excellence, and several of our pilgrims kept notes or posted updates. But I did want to report on the spiritual benefits of the pilgrimage, specifically as it has to do with my mission as a Pauline Cooperator.

I began the pilgrimage in a mood of expectant floundering. Three years into my retirement from the University of Delaware, I am finding my way into the rhythm and activity of the rest of my life. I have a mission as a Pauline Cooperator. I love the Pauline charism, I love Blessed James Alberione, I feel a fierce desire to help continue what he began in response to his interior vision from Jesus Master. But what is my next step? What is a Pauline Cooperator? What do I do, and with whom? Expectant floundering, at its best!

The picture at the top of this essay shows the Cathedral of Alba, where Blessed Alberione experienced his call from Jesus Master during the Night Between the Centuries. Our pilgrimage took us to this and many other sites that are of great importance to the Pauline Family. On our last day, we visited the open tomb of Blessed Alberione himself. In reflecting on everything that happened on the pilgrimage, here are my first responses:

1) I am reading Tametsi Futura, the encyclical of Pope Leo XIII that had such an impact on the young James Alberione. I decided to do this today, and in looking it up, lo and behold I discover that it was issued on this date, November 1 -- All Saints Day -- in 1900. No wonder it was fresh on Blessed Alberione's mind on the Night Between the Centuries! It had just been issued, and the young seminarian was just soaking up its message.

Take a look below at the opening paragraph of Tametsi Futura. How relevant it is for us today! Having just come from Rome, where thousands of people crowded the streets and churches of Vatican City, I can relate not only to the opening lines about the tenor of the times, but the later hope Pope Leo expresses about the revival of interest in all things holy. How odd it was to see, in the midst of what we are told is a very secularized Italy, the pilgrims from all around the world on their knees, in prayer, standing in long lines, cheering the Pope, and otherwise showing signs that although Christ may be hidden, He is not unsought. Pope Leo XIII writes:

The outlook on the future is by no means free from anxiety; on the contrary, there are many serious reasons for alarm, on account of numerous and long-standing causes of evil, of both a public and a private nature. Nevertheless, the close of the century really seems in God's mercy to afford us some degree of consolation and hope. For no one will deny that renewed interest in spiritual matters and a revival of Christian faith and piety are influences of great moment for the common good. And there are sufficiently clear indications at the present day of a very general revival or augmentation of these virtues.

For example, in the very midst of worldly allurements and in spite of so many obstacles to piety, what great crowds have flocked to Rome to visit the "Threshold of the Apostles" at the invitation of the Sovereign Pontiff! Both Italians and foreigners are openly devoting themselves to religious exercises, and, relying upon the indulgences offered by the Church, are most earnestly seeking the means to secure their eternal salvation. Who could fail to be moved by the present evident increase of devotion towards the person of Our Saviour?

The ardent zeal of so many thousands, united in heart and mind, "from the rising of the Sun to the going down thereof," in venerating the Name of Jesus Christ and proclaiming His praises, is worthy of the best days of Christianity. Would that the outburst of these flames of antique faith might be followed by a mighty conflagration! Would that the splendid example of so many might kindle the enthusiasm of all! For what so necessary for our times as a widespread renovation among the nations of Christian principles and old-fashioned virtues? The great misfortune is that too many turn a deaf ear and will not listen to the teachings of this revival of piety. Yet, "did they but know the gift of God," did they but realise that the greatest of all misfortunes is to fall away from the World's Redeemer and to abandon Christian faith and practice, they would be only too eager to turn back, and so escape certain destruction.

2) I'd like to organize a weekly 24-hour Adoration from Pauline Cooperators and friends from around the world. Each Monday is dedicated to St. Paul. Could we not each make a commitment to spend one hour each Monday in A Visit to the Lord, in front of the Blessed Sacrament whether exposed or not as we can find in our local area?

Many of you -- many of us -- already make A Visit daily. I thought that how wonderful it would be if the Cooperators cooperated to have a 24-hour praise and adoration to the Blessed Trinity each Monday, a prayer rising to the Father through Jesus Master, in union with the Holy Spirit, asking that we discern how we might best, individually and as a group of lay Paulines, continue Blessed Alberione's vision of using the means of social communication to evangelize the world. We can ask Blessed Alberione, Venerable Thecla Merlo, Blessed Timothy Giaccardo, and all of the Paulines who have gone before to join us in this prayer.

Who's up for it? This is my first call. Pass the word. I will be "taking names" as they say, and filling out a schedule hopefully to cover all 24 hours, setting Greenwich Mean Time as the standard for converting everyone's individual local hour.

Invitation to prayer

2010-10-12T08:23:00.006-04:00

Joining in daily prayer with a friend of mine, me to Mary as mother of Jesus and she to the Goddess (the true Divine), counting Mary as one of her forms.

I'm putting my prayer here so I can refer back to it easily. And to remind myself of our mutual lifting of one another in prayer. We have radically different notions of the Divine. I hope and pray that we make the world a lighter place for uniting in prayer, religious antagonists though we are. Please join us in this prayer as you think of it! Lift up your hearts and minds to the true Divinity however you may understand *DIVINEBEING* . One of my longstanding goals in life is to motivate folks of different religions and no religion to pray for one another from the heart. Religion is a human construct, but the "heart" (the seat of love, not the organ) is a gift with which we are all endowed by our Creator. Even if we don't think we have one. (Creator, that is, or possibly heart also although that's rarer).

If you want to let me know you are joining in this prayer, by all means do. I find mutual prayer efforts within the community of humankind to be very encouraging to my own faith and journey.

Morning Consecration to Mary

My Queen, my Mother, I offer myself entirely to thee. And to show my devotion to thee, I offer thee this days my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my heart, my whole being without reserve. Wherefore, good Mother, as I am thine own, keep me, guard me as thy property and possession.

For I will consider my cat Pangur

2010-10-09T07:55:00.006-04:00

Why are so many good poems written about cats??

A parishioner, whose late husband was my father's psychiatrist during many hospitalizations, donated a sizable chunk of her large collection of books to the Pious Ladies Bookmobile. Like my mother and like many seniors who approach the eighth and ninth decades of their life, she wanted to dispose of all but her most precious possessions to make the task less painful for her children, after her passing.

So I now my living-room-turned-workspace is bulging at the seams with boxes of books -- a bounty, but also a labor. It's a labor of love though, and I promised the donor I would do my best to find good homes for the books she has acquired and loved over the years.

I am listing John O'Donohue's book Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, and have to pause to record here the poem of an 8th century Irish monk known variously as "Pangur Bán", "The Scholar and His Cat", and other titles. Every time I read this poem, I smile and feel a kinship down the centuries, the kinship of one writer for another.

The Scholar and His Cat

I and Pangur Bán, my cat
'Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
'Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will,
He too plies his simple skill.

'Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way:
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our tasks we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

Translated by Robin Flower

A surprisingly poignant essay that takes off from an observation about Christopher Hitchens

2010-09-27T21:37:00.003-04:00

Bell, Book, and Candle

Thursday September 23, 2010

By A.G. Harmon

Christopher Hitchens, journalist, author, and member of the “new atheists,” is in danger of death. After a recent diagnosis of cancer, he is reported to be building fortifications around his soul, to keep it from betraying his professed non-belief. As such, his position is now both foxhole and bunker, a place from which he lobs public promises against grace, and public vows to those with whom he stands in league. Any religious conversion that might occur, he swears, should be understood as nothing more than the ravings of a diseased mind. With his last will and testament, he desires to excommunicate himself: ring the bell—close the book—snuff the candle.

But despite Mr. Hitchens' wishes, I can only partly share his aspirations. I both hope that he lives and hope that he fails. That is, I hope not only that he survives this affliction, but also, if he cannot, that God dashes all of his well-laid plans.

Strangely tasteless as it may sound, I don’t want him to get what he desires—though I cannot rightly think what could break down the Alcatraz he has made. Still, that I cannot imagine it is of no consequence; there might be something; there might even be someone.

My optimism is born from an unlikely encounter. I was back visiting a bookstore last Sunday, rearranging displays as I’m wont to do, moving magazines about and foregrounding underappreciated novels, when someone interrupted my labors.

“But even the chaos, God made,” said a passing voice.

When I turned to see who had said this thing, I spied two people: a boy of about fourteen—in basketball shorts, flip flops, cotton hoodie—and, trailing behind him, an old man—tall, ungainly, spectacled. He was a spry octogenarian, though, and no matter how fast the boy walked, the man kept apace; the Roman missal was curled into a tube and held behind his back.

Read the rest.

Late-term Abortions in the United States

2010-09-27T14:22:00.004-04:00

Live baby in womb, 16 weeks gestation

329,000 babies between this age & 20 weeks gestation were killed by abortion in the U.S. in 2005, the last year for which the Alan Guttmacher Institute* provides complete statistics.

Live baby in womb,20 weeks gestation
213,000 babies this age were killed by abortion in the U.S. in 2005, the last year for which the Alan Guttmacher Institute provides complete statistics.

QUESTION: Even if you believe that a fetus should have no legal right to live, how do you feel about the killing of 542,000 significantly developed offspring in the womb each year? What has gone wrong with the pro-choice vision of "abortion: safe, legal, and RARE"? A person of conscience ought to wonder.

QUESTION: Take a look at the size of these babies. Think about what it takes to sever the lives of offspring this well developed. Even if you believe that a fetus should have no legal right to live, how do you think death should be administered to them? Should they receive anaesthetic before their skulls are pierced by scissors and crushed?A person of conscience ought to wonder.

*The Alan Guttmacher Institute is the research arm of Planned Parenthood. Both pro-life and pro-choice groups accept the Guttmacher statistics on abortion in the United States.

40 Days for Life Kick-Off this Saturday, Sept. 18

2010-09-17T06:38:00.006-04:00

Amanda Miner & Kelly Smith, Rachel's Vineyard

The worldwide 40 Days for Life campaign of prayer, fasting, and peaceful vigiling outside of abortion clinics begins this Wednesday, September 22. I've participated in this campaign a couple of times since it began in 2006; this year, I am one of the coordinators for Delaware Right to Life's Wilmington campaign.

Saturday is the 40 Days Kick-Off, and will take place from 8:30am-1:00pm at Church of the Holy Child, 2500 Naamans Road, Wilmington DE. It's a good place to find out about pro-life resources available in this area. Besides five speakers, there will be representatives from these organizations available at literature tables: A Door of Hope pregnancy center, Birthright of Delaware, Delaware Right to Life, A Rose and a Prayer, and Rachel's Vineyard. Great place to learn efficiently about the pro-life community and its resources in the Delaware area.

Fr. John McFadden

All 40 Days participants are invited to a
SEPTEMBER 18TH “KICK-OFF”
At Church of the Holy Child,
2500 Naamans Road, Wilmington DE

8:30 am – 1:00 pm

The schedule for the day is as follows and the times are approximate:

8:30 - 9:00 Sign in and Light Refreshments

9:00 – 9:15 Welcome and Opening Prayer (FATHER CARRIER)

9:15 – 10:00 Father John McFadden – “Witnessing for the Precious Infants”

10:00 – 10:15 Opportunity for Questions

10:15 – 11:00 Kelly Smith and Amanda Miner from Rachel’s Vineyard
Ministries

11:00 – 11:15 Break

11:15 -- 11:45 Patricia Campbell – “Being at the right place at the right time”

11:45 -- 12:30 Lunch (Pizza, beverage, dessert)

12:30 – 1:00 Closing Remarks Prayer (PASTOR PETIT)
Parish contacts to pick up literature to use at PP

2010-09-07T08:01:00.004-04:00

Photo of Easter Almuena

The coda for this blog, Confessions of a Cooperator, is "Musings of a late middle-aged Catholic laywoman who has made The Promise to participate as a Pauline Cooperator in Fr. James Alberione's vision of evangelization through the new means of social communication." I am one of only two Cooperators in Delaware, and my comrade-in-arms, Eva Vary, is leaving soon to move permanently to New York.

But my fellow Cooperators are located throughout the world. Easter Almuena is in Hawai'i, on the big island (I think), and she recently sent me a copy of her just-published book, "Serving God Joyfully Right Here in Hawai'i: Stories, Life Journeys, Reflections." I recommend you order a copy directly through Easter at Joy of Christ press.

One reviewer characterized the book as a "Chicken Soup for the Catholic Hawai'ian Soul" and I suppose it is although I think that sells the book a little short. I thought of the Chicken Soup series also when I read Serving God Joyfully, but the few times I have picked up a Chicken Soup book I have put it down without much interest. I will admit here and now, freely, that I don't know if this is because the books are inspirational at a shallow level -- which is the impression I have always gotten from the few times I've flipped through them -- or because I am predisposed to look down my nose at anything so obviously non-intellectual. Intellectual snobbery is definitely one of my sins, against which I fight all the time now. Snarkiness has been the hallmark of popular intellectualism for most of my lifetime, and snarkiness is not a virtue but a substitute for real wit. Since the Chicken Soup books have not a snarky bone in their bodies, perhaps my disdain for them is my own sinful sense of superiority. I will have to give them another try, in the wake of my absolute love for Easter Almuena's book, which has a similarity of structure to the Chicken Soup books.

However, I do think the excellence of Serving God Joyfully Right Here in Hawai'i goes far beyond its incidental similarity to the Chicken Soup books. Easter's book inspires down to the very bone of my being. I don't know what instructions she gave to her contributors, but she has managed to produce an expression of how one local church - the Catholic Church in Hawai'i - reflects the beauty, excitement, vitality, heroism, dark-seeing faith, light-bearing compassion, of the unversal Church, visible and invisible. In Easter's book I find a modern witness to the reality of the communion of saints. I know why I love Christ in His Bride, the Church. And I long to visit the Diocese of Hawai'i and meet its people. Or, perhaps, to attempt a similar project and discover in the Diocese of Wilmington too a garden of flowering souls of faith, hope and love in Christ.

Here's the review that captures my experience of this awe-inspiring book.

I'll most likely have more to write later. Right now, time for Mass. Got the inspiration to go from a quote in the book, by St. Alphonsus Liguori: "One single Mass gives more honor to God than all the penances of the Saints, the labors of the Apostles, the sufferings of the Martyrs and even the burning love of the Blessed Mother of God." My question to you -- hyperbole, or...???

Memento mori

2010-08-26T04:22:00.004-04:00

I have been thinking of death constantly. My own death. The death of friends and family. I can't get it off my mind. And it's scary.

I've suffered a series of disappointments lately, and their net effect has been to pull the rug out from under my notion of my own apostolic calling. If I cannot dare great things for the kingdom of God, if I cannot be the Pauline of work, study and action that Blessed Alberione lays out for me as a path in life, then who am I? The answer is obvious, and lay before me all the time: I am a mortal being, and death is my lot.

I've always known this, and Death has been my secret shadow forever. In 8th grade, we had to do an English project on a theme in literature, and I chose death. I once sat at a meeting of a parish women's group discussing a theme for an upcoming retreat we were sponsoring. Let's make the theme "death", I suggested. That flag got no salutes at all.

Then there is my own experience with death, in the form of seeing people I love dearly depart from this life. Lately, more and more. Three friends died this year. One, I was able to be with the evening that she passed. One, I was exchanging email with to see about getting together for lunch, when I heard her name called at Mass in the prayer for the dead. My loud gasp made heads turn.

What preys on me, oddly enough, is my material possessions. My books, my papers, all the chaos of my life. I don't want to leave behind objects that will cause my loved ones pain. As far as I'm concerned, God should have made it so that when we die, all of our material objects just crumble into dust and disappear. So that nobody has to sift through them and make decisions about disposition.

My mother cleared out all but the most essential accoutrements of her life a couple of years before she died. She told us all to come look through the attic and the basement and get anything we wanted, because she was getting rid of everything. She did us a service.

Memento mori.

Why why should I the World be minding, Therein a World of Evils Finding. Then Farwell World: Farwell thy jarres, thy Joies thy Toies thy Wiles thy Warrs. Truth Sounds Retreat: I am not sorye. The Eternall Drawes to him my heart, By Faith (which can thy Force Subvert) To Crowne me (after Grace) with Glory.

Late afternoon movie viewing with Bill

2010-08-11T16:52:00.005-04:00

Uncle Wally is on the road, heading back to Chicago. Good visit. Leslie G. mistook him for Bill. "I didn't know your hair was all white now." :-)

Bill and I are kicking back and watching a strange movie on Showtime Beyond called Pontypool. Here's a Western DJ (cowboy hat and boots, check!) on the air in Ontario with two leather jacket clad women, reporting on a riot taking place a few kilometres away. Now he is quoting French linguist Roland Barthes... "Trauma is a news photo without a caption."

Something apocalyptic has happened -- a mob of savage, slow-moving people babbling in bizarre ways. No word yet on whether the eating of brains is involved.

"I am told that these people are imitating windshield wipers -- making the sound of windshield wipers."

The plot thickens. Hanging up now.

... Later. It's a zombie virus! It is spread by LANGUAGE! Words are infected. It enters the victim when he/she hears the word and UNDERSTANDS it!

A zombie movie where language is the host for the zombie virus. Wow! Fascinating film! Very meta!

Pontypool. See it!

Jealousy: or, Coming up for air as a busy spring and summer wind down

2010-08-09T18:37:00.011-04:00

For a retired person, I work like a dog. This spring and summer -- busiest ever!

May through July, I worked with Pat Radell and Nancy Frick on the 40 Days for Life Fall campaign. I wrote business plans and budgets for Serendipity, our wished-for next-to-Planned Parenthood Art Center/Life Center/Book and Media Center/ Coffee Bar in Wilmington. I logged 4000+ miles over three months on various road trips with kids, grandkids and Bill. We welcomed granddaughter Rosalyn into the world in May, and 5 weeks later grandson Ish. I visited sister Sue, sister-in-law Gerry (and Chicago kinfolk), and was visited by daughter Gabe, grandkids Zeke and Amelia, and brother-in-law Wally. Lastly and just recently, I roomed with writer/photographer Marie Socorso and writer Kathy Barr while attending the Catholic Writers Guild conference in Valley Forge on site at at the Catholic Marketing Network trade show.

I have had so many irons in so many fires that I am knocking them over them & branding myself with them by accident. Ouch! My spiritual equilibrium has taken a searing hit. I have neglected my daily Pauline Hour of adoration, and can feel its loss keenly. (Not, however, keenly enough to break the inertia and take it up again, eh Rae??)

How luxurious is it for priests and nuns to live on grounds with the Blessed Sacrament?? I was in a book group awhile back that read Brideshead Revisited. There's a part in the book where the youngest Marchmain daughter, Cordelia, is explaining to (or maybe showing) Charles Ryder their own private chapel, with the Blessed Sacrament reserved. One of the women in the book group (an ex-Catholic, of course) was disgusted by Cordelia's delight at having an adoration chapel on the estate grounds. She cited this as an example of the snobbery and high-handed braggadocio of Catholicism in general and the Marchmain family in particular. I said I would be as overjoyed as Cordelia if I had a chapel in my own home. How much more faithful might I be if I didn't have to drive to a church whose open hours I knew whenever I wanted to make a Visit? (Yeah, yeah, yeah... would you REALLY, Rae? You've got plenty of opportunity now to eschew inertia and form the habit. Just do it!)

I am jealous. That's my theme for the summer. Jealousy and greed. I have a wonderful life, all the leisure I need, 7 down-below kids, 2 saints in heaven, 9 stellar grandkids, a husband to die for, and I want more... More what? At the Catholic Writers Guild conference, it all came tumbling back. What I want. What I don't want to want. Fame. Admiration. Riches. Worldly success. The diamond-back reptiles hissing seductively in the pits of the damned-- didn't I foreswear them years ago? I thought so, but meeting all the fresh, young writers at CWG and the steadily publishing big fry of the Catholic publishing world has got me all riled up with ambition. I want to be young again. I want to be just starting out, with Catholic enthusiasts, intellectuals, imagists and idealists bursting the seams of contemporary culture like I see all around me in the 21st century Church, instead of Catholics with their tails between their legs, ashamed of their intellectual heritage and confused into juvenility like when I was young. I want my imaginary apartment in NYC with my sister Marguerite and our white long-haired cat-- me a working writer, Marguerite in the world of fashion design.

These kids are reclaiming their heritage, and are unapologetically forging forward into an ever more complex understanding of Catholic life and culture. Twenty-somethings are talking Aquinas, Chesterton, Justin Martyr, Augustine, with no apologies and no shame. They are arguing over the Theology of the Body. They openly pray the rosary. The rosary! I remember the years that holding a rosary in one's hands in a Catholic church was to invite open scorn! Do these kids know how lucky they are, to have this vibrant, new millenial Church? They have a freedom and a camaraderie that my generation missed out on completely. Yes, yes, yes -- as Barbara Nicolosi Harrington so eloquently states, in "Turn, Turn, Turn" it was all our fault. Mea culpa, mea culpa -- we were all too busy being snotty and rejecting the prayers, liturgies, theology, art and literature of our Catholic heritage and embracing relevance (not to mention drugs and rock'n'roll-- fortunately my marriage, ridiculed by my freak friends in the Sixties, kept me from the "free sex" part of the triad) to hold on to what we had.

I guess I'm doing penance now for the theological and intellectual vacuity of my lazy, pleasure-seeking baby boomer generation. Yeah, I'm jealous of the youngsters. We are superfluous to them. We who came back to the Church in the last half of the 20th century are pokey and still half-ashamed of Christ and His Body. We still can't believe that Benediction is back in vogue. I cried the first time we said the Divine Praises in my parish in the late 80's -- I never thought I'd hear them again in my lifetime. Do these kids know how blessed they are? Do they know the bullet they dodged by dint of chronology?

The picture above shows a t-shirt from the Catholic to the Max line of apparel that is popular with the teenagers and twenty-somethings. I almost bought one, but decided if I started buying t-shirts I might not be able to stop... The front says "Get Holy or Die Tryin'", and the back lists a bunch of martyrs. Gotta love the catalog description:

Get holy or die tryin' Holiness is not a spectator sport! This shirt is meant to encourage us to holiness and honor those that have died living the Gospel. The list on the back gives us a look at men and women who have died “giving it all”.

Get holy. Sigh. From your t-shirt to the ear of the Triune God Whom I love beyond reason! But not beyond laziness. 'Twas ever thus.

Oh - and I saw David Tennant's Hamlet last night. With Patrick Stewart as Claudius. First time I ever "got" Hamlet's lonely lunacy. Like the Fool in King Lear, but torn apart by the exigencies of the Fourth Commandment.

The two most important days of your life

2010-07-27T07:47:00.003-04:00

Another book I am reading, that I found in the Pauline Book and Media Center, is On Becoming Beloved : Heroic Sanctity in Marriage by Patricia O'Malley Ashker. Ashker, a member of the Holy Family Institute of the Pauline Family, founded by Blessed Alberione -- has written a counter-cultural book that dares to say that the "secret to sanctity" for married persons is "putting one's spouse first, lifting them up in prayer and sacrifice, with heaven as the ultimate goal for both partners." She writes about the seriousness of the vows of marriage - a covenant made with God, entered into freely, establishing a clear path for navigating the challenges of life as a couple, united with the Creator and surrounded by His graces and helps through the Christ-instituted sacrament of matrimony.

She asks the question, at one point, "Do you know what the two most important days of your life are?" Her answer surprised me. The two most important days of your life are:

today
the day of your death

Sanctity is built moment by moment in the mundane events of daily life. Like Flannery O'Connor, Ashker sees ordinary life as the staging ground for fierce battles between good and evil. Our gift of free will can choose heroic virtue or cowardly sin (my words, not hers), both of which then ripple out into the world around us impacting the people and environment in which we live, work and play. If we choose our spouse's needs over our own, we practice within marriage the same kind of "little way" practiced and taught by St. Therese of Lisieux who chose the needs of her sister nuns -- even the annoying ones -- over her own. St. Therese, through habitual sacrifice of her own will, learned to free herself from her own likes and dislikes in order to depend on God alone, rather than the vagaries of minute by minute satisfaction and accomodation.

All of this is classic Catholic spirituality that I learned as a kid. The concept of self-sacrifice fell on hard times in the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties. In particular, women were advised to drop the notion of self-sacrifice in marriage in order that it not feed an unbalanced power struggle between men and women, the kind in which entitled males felt that female subservience was their God-given right. According to Ashker, both spouses are entitled to be cherished, served, and made the focus of tender help, compassion and love. Both spouses are sworn to direct their maximum expenditure of relationship energy into the spousal relationship (my clumsy words, not hers).

That explains the first most important day of one's life. All we have is the present day in which to act. Actions, not feelings, are the building blocks of sanctity. That's a very Catholic notion - the Reformation brought about an unfortunate identification of heroic action with "vain works" which do not win us salvation. This is not the post to explain the Catholic understanding of faith and works, but suffice it to say I embrace the Church's centuries-held belief that our actions in choosing good or evil are quite meaningful -- it is only we, by freely turning away from God (an action), who can endanger the redemption Christ won for us at such a cost.

And what of the second most important day of your life -- the day that you die? The covenant of marriage, Ashker says, has as its purpose the mutual sanctification of the spouses as they journey through life headed to their eternal union with the Triune God. What is the hour of death, if not the final moment in which we are free to exercise our will as mortal beings, for good or for evil? Hopefully a lifetime of habit of choosing good will forestall any of the devil's wiles or last-minute efforts to turn us to "the Dark Side" :-) . If we are married persons, let us spend each day treating our covenanted spouse with such care and support that his or her time of death will be all the easier in choosing, finally, for the Kingdom of Light.

The sins of Oscar Wilde and the sins of Flannery O'Connor

2010-07-26T07:27:00.010-04:00

I'm sitting in the kitchen of my sister Sue Marie's place listening to the sounds of early morning birds and insects, examining my life. Each day is a gift, of this I am aware. And I piss away as many gifted hours as I embrace. In this I am Everyman. Yet having died to Christ in the waters of baptism, I am keenly aware, each day and each hour even as I piss the gift of time away, of the ineluctable lure of the new life, the new order of grace, into which I have been born and in which I find the new Rae who walks in the garden with the new Adam and the new Eve.

And it hurts, this straddling of two worlds. Every human being feels it, and calls it by different names according to how he or she interprets the human experiment itself.

I am reading two books at the moment, both of which shed their own light on the pain of the straddling. The Abbess of Andalusia, by Lorraine Murray, examines Flannery O'Connor's life as a believer. The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde edited by Richard Ellman, presents a selection of WIlde's critical writings, after an excellent introduction to the life and times of the man and writer.

Flannery O'Connor interprets the human experiment as the Catholic Church interprets it; as I interpret it: We are created by the good, Triune God who created the universe itself. We are created for His Glory and our own. As a race, we fell under the spell of temptation and sin, rejecting our Creator and His ordering of our lives towards goodness, truth and beauty. He took our own form -- His Second Person, the Son, was born of the Virgin Mary as a true man. He -- the Christ, born Jesus -- undertook a restoration of our innocence. He repudiated our rejection of the Creator and in our name accepted the original ordering of human life towards goodness, truth and beauty. An innocent-- the new Adam teaching and healing in the world of fallen, warped and wounded men --he paid the price imposed on innocence by men and women everywhere under the spell of sin - the price of humiliation and death. But by that very act of surrendering his innocence up to whatever guilty men and fallen spirits might concoct to destroy the Creator's ordering of all things,Christ the Word made Flesh brought about the powerful breaking of the bonds of sin and death and set off the chain of events that brought complete restoration of human creature with Creator. The Kingdom of God broke into the mundane world of men in a dazzling manifestation of the new Life now offered to men and women through the Body of Christ extended in time and space - the Church with its way (imitation of Christ), truth (teachings) and life (sacramental grace).

Flannery's straddling of the worlds in her writing and in her life is always consonant with the way in which the Church interprets reality. In every human action in the mundane world, Flannery perceived a struggle between good and evil, between the new creation and the old one that labors still under the spell of sin and temptation. Grace is offered in the crux of the struggle - grace accepted or rejected, in fiction as in life.

For Oscar Wilde, sin and temptation are tools of the artist in his quest for transcendence, which requires liberation from all that is shallow and conventional (ie. mundane). Influenced heavily by the philosophies explicated by Walter Pater and others, Wilde (although flirting with Catholicism) gave his heart and, possibly, his soul for a time to the search for transcendence of the soul through transgressive experience and raw sensation of the body, as a means of fulfilling the artist's highest calling, which is beyond good and evil. If this last sounds like Nietzsche, it's because Wilde covered much of Nietzsche's philosophical ground first. In the introduction to The Critic as Artist, Ellmann writes:

"Andre Gide found Nietzsche less exciting because he had read Wilde, and Thomas Mann in one of his last essays remarks almost with chagrin on how many of Nietzsche's aphorisms might have been expressed by Wilde, and how many of Wilde's by Nietzsche. What I think can be urged for Wilde then, is that for his own reasons and in his own way he laid the basis for many critical positions which are still debated in much the same terms, and which we like to attribute to more ponderous names."

It moves me to read about Flannery and Wilde. Flannery explored the depths of trangressive experience also, in her writing. She had as little use for convention as Wilde -- less so, in fact, because Wilde although rejecting the conventions of his culture was very much committed to adhering to the conventions of transgressive conversation and shocking wit that made him the darling of the drawing and dining rooms. Flannery shocked the conventional reader and critic by the force of the grotesqueries of her imagination as put down on paper. In company, she was reserved; in her behavior, courteous. Wilde shocked not just in his writing but in his speech and in his flaunting of his culture's mores.

What kept O'Connor grounded was her fierce commitment to Catholicism. The prohibitions against sexual profligacy was not, for Flannery O'Connor, a repressive cultural convention that prevented her from exploring transcendence through experience -- it was a wise teaching of a human institution founded by the Transcendent Human Being himself, the new Adam, the Christ, firstborn of the dead. If Flannery had lived in a culture where sexual profligacy is a perfectly acceptable cultural convention -- a culture like our own, for example - she still would have been firecely committed to sexual temperance. For the Catholic, the surrounding culture may or may not hold conventions that are consonant with the New Life. It may or may not promote the classic virtues. It matters not. The committed Catholic's loyalty -- and this goes for the artist as well as the humblest worker -- is towards the gospel, the New Creation, the Kingdom of God, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sin, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.

Poor Oscar Wilde. But he made his peace in the end, and found his way into the sheepfold. Flannery's life and writings shine out as a sterling example of how the artist is not compromised by religious truth, but liberated. She knew herself to be a sinner, and regretted it. She took the Church's remedies for sin. Wilde knew himself to be a sinner, and reveled in it for a time. He came late to the Church's remedies, and suffered great pain as both an artist and a man for his mistaken notion of the absolute value of flaunting convention.

Michael Voris tells it like it is

2010-07-21T11:00:00.000-04:00

Michael Voris is in your face and annoying, but I sure do like that he doesn't pussyfoot around about the reality of the demonic. The devil's biggest triumph in modern times, they say, is convincing folks of his non-existence. Sure we do nasty stuff on our own. But the father of lies and lord of the flies is a Type A overachiever, fer sure.

Planned Parenthood is not healthy for children and other living things - oh Emily Knearl, how can you be so deceived?

2010-07-21T09:30:00.004-04:00

On their web site, PP suggests parents tell their teenagers that pornography, although containing exagerrated images, is basically part of a normal, healthy sex life. So why should we be surprised that PP covers up a 31 year old having sex with a 13 year old?

More on the firing of University of Illinois professor Ken Howell

2010-07-11T20:07:00.003-04:00

CatholicVoterAction.org has a detailed report on the firing of Dr. Ken Howell for instructing his student about Catholic moral teaching on homosexuality in a class titled Introduction to Catholicism.

Amazing that this could happen -- but in a way I don't mind if the insanity in this country really does start to penalize Catholics for their beliefs. Eventually, people will have to choose up sides, and decide if they want to live in a country where freedom of speech has meaning, or whether they want to live in a society where "political correctness" has mutated into real fascism.

College Teacher Fired for His Catholic Beliefs

2010-07-09T23:41:00.001-04:00

It was just a matter of time...

Join me at the Catholic Writers Conference in Valley Forge

2010-07-09T10:58:00.010-04:00

Attention Catholic Writers, especially those on the East Coast. In conjunction with the Catholic Marketing Network Trade Show,

The Catholic Writers Conference, Live! coming up in August!

When: August 4-6- 2010

Where: Valley Forge Convention Center, King of Prussia, PA

Who: Catholic writers, publishers, agents, editors, everyone who has an interest in Catholic publishing.

Come and pray, play and learn with Catholic publishers, editors, authors, and marketing experts.
Attend special pitch sessions and pitch your manuscript directly to Catholic publishers and editors.

Watch video.

Click here to register.

World Wide Web--The second annual Catholic Writers’ Conference LIVE will be held August 4-6, 2010, at the Scanticon Hotel Valley Forge in King of Prussia, PA. Sponsored by the Catholic Writer’s Guild and the Catholic Marketing Network (CMN), and held in conjunction with CMN’s annual retailer trade show, the Catholic Writers Conference LIVE provides Catholic authors with a prime opportunity to meet and share their faith with editors, publishers, fellow writers, and bookstore owners from across the globe.

This year's conference will feature presentations on such topics as market tips and time management for busy writers, poetry, creating evil characters, working with an editor, creating winning proposals, journaling and much more. Speakers include Catholic publishing representatives Claudia Volkman - General Manager of Circle Press, Regina Doman - acquisitions editor for Sophia Institute Press, and Tom Wehner - Managing Editor of the National Catholic Register, all of whom will also hear pitches from writers.

Among the other speakers are Mark Shea (Mother of the Son), Michelle Buckman (My Beautiful Disaster), Donna-Marie Cooper-O’Boyle (Mother Teresa and Me), Susie Lloyd (Please Don’t Drink the Holy Water), and Publicist Lisa Wheeler from the Maximus Group.

“Attending this conference has been the best thing I have done for myself professionally,” Carol Bannon, author of the children’s book Handshake from Heaven, said of the 2009 conference. Her fellow writer Melanie Cameron agreed, saying she left the last conference re-energized. “I recommend [this] conference as a resource for any author (or wannabe) at any stage. You will walk away empowered!”

The Catholic Writers Guild, a religious non-profit organization, sponsors both this live conference in August and an online conference in February to further its mission of promoting Catholic literature. “Our conferences are totally focused on encouraging faithful Catholics to share genuine Catholic culture and faith in their writing no matter what genre,” says CWG President Ann Margaret Lewis. “These events are integral to our mission of ‘creating a rebirth of Catholic arts and letters.”

Registration costs $85 for CWG members, $95 for non-members and $42 for students. There's also a discounted combined membership. To register or for more information, go to http://www.catholicwritersconference.com.

Catholicism on Kindle!

2010-06-28T08:08:00.002-04:00

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em! Kindle and the other e-readers are playing havoc with the publishing industry. Booksellers like myself are seeing dwindling sales as more and more folks want the convenience of electronic books.

And who can blame them? I LOVE books, but the Kindle fascinates me. One of these days I'll buy one - probably just before the next time I fly out to the west coast. Instead of carrying three books with me to tide me over until my return, I'll carry a Kindle and as many books as I want.

So - try it out. Here are some Catholic titles from Kindle. Enjoy.

This year's model of grandbabies!

2010-06-27T10:19:00.002-04:00

Babies are bursting out all over!!

So far, this season of spring and summer 2010 has yielded a bumper crop of Stabosz grandchildren! These are #s 8 and 9. At top we have Rosalyn Gwenhyver Gregg, born to Em and Scott a few weeks ago. (I'm a Bad, BaD GRANDMOM... I don't have the exact date at hand or committed to memory). And on the bottom, little Ishmael Matthew Stabosz, Jr., born to Sine' and Ish just yesterday at 4:37am.

I look at them and grin from ear to ear. God is good!

My first trip to the Bay Area

2010-06-07T07:19:00.008-04:00

Top ten Lessons Learned from my recent trip to the San Francisco Bay Area:

1. United doesn't just break guitars. I will never cheat on Southwest again.

2. PLATO IV terminals still have that warm, orange glow.

3. Seeing old friends is great. Not connecting up with old friends and siblings is not. Life is a mix.

4. Google security is lax. Any old 60-something PLATO gal can break into their locked headquarters. And, apparently, nobody older than 30 works in Quality Control. Or anywhere?

5. Burmese food is AWESOME. Eaten with a good friend, MANNA!

6. Many, many people have a genuine gratitude towards and affection (even love) for Don Bitzer, the "Father of PLATO."

7. Rosanna and Frances, the Temporary Drivers License ladies at the Delaware Motor Vehicle Division are sympathetic, responsive, and efficient to solve your problems. Who knew??

8. Brian Dear rocks. Aaron Woolfson rolls. Sharon Dugdale, Bonnie Seiler and Ruth Chabay tell a mean PLATO software story, and for their pains got gypped of a Q&A session.

9. PLATO games can still bring out the raucousness, in 50-, 60-, and 70-something males.

10. St. Bartholemew's in San Mateo has a gorgeous interior, but leaves Jesus exposed and alone.

The real reason dinosaurs became extinct...

2010-06-07T07:10:00.002-04:00

Tip of the hat to Rachelle Gardner! From the comments on her literary blog, this has apparently been making the rounds, but this is the first I've seen of it.

Q & A: "Top Kill" procedure next up for BP oil spill

2010-05-26T13:58:00.003-04:00

Q: How well has this worked before?

A:
"This has never been attempted at these depths," says a BP statement.

Re-assuring words indeed!

I keep wondering if it's time to buy a generator (and a gun), stockpile gallons of potable water (and cans of Dinty Moore stew), and learn to shoot a firearm.

Google Smart Phone -- AUGGHHHH !!!

2010-05-20T11:20:00.003-04:00

New Google Phone Service Whispers Targeted Ads Directly Into Users' Ears

Thank the Lord this is an Onion parody -- so far!

TIP OF THE HAT TO THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC.

Remembering Curt Wayne, my buddy

2010-04-14T14:00:00.005-04:00

Sunday marked the 2nd anniversary of the death of Curtis Wayne - husband, father, artist, lover of life, and my good buddy. I've been thinking about Curt a lot lately. And about Jack Grabowski, another good friend who died the week before Curt. I miss them both here on earth. But what I've been thinking about is their presence in the communion of saints. What are they up to now? Do they still think in the limited terms that I think, or have their minds been introduced to the unfathomable breadth and depth and height of reality without its cloaking devices?

Do they see God face to face? And what of their hearts? My faith tells me that as the accretions of their limited earthly existence disappear, they become more of who they really are. A quietly smiling, robust Curt whose humor and wry creativity reigns free of the shadows of sin. A Jack whose love of books and films translates to unimaginable apprehension of the richness of the human story.

John Prine, a favorite of Curt, says it all. Curt, buddy, this one's for you! AND HOW ABOUT THEM PHILS???

Fish and Whistle, by John Prine

I been thinking lately about the people I meet
The carwash on the corner and the hole in the street
The way my ankles hurt with shoes on my feet
And I'm wondering if I'm gonna see tomorrow.

Father forgive us for what we must do
You forgive us we'll forgive you
We'll forgive each other till we both turn blue
Then we'll whistle and go fishing in heaven.

I was in the army but I never dug a trench
I used to bust my knuckles on a monkey wrench
Then I'd go to town and drink and give the girls a pinch
But I don't think they ever even noticed me.

Fish and whistle, whistle and fish
Eat everything that they put on your dish
And when we get through we'll make a big wish
That we never have to do this again again

On my very first job I said thank you and please
They made me scrub a parking lot down on my knees
Then I got fired for being scared of bees
And they only give me fifty cents an hour.

The rosary can change your life!

2010-04-09T10:16:00.000-04:00

iPad versus ObamaPad - kudos to my brother Pic and nephew Nicky!

2010-04-08T16:57:00.003-04:00

That's my nephew Nicky up there in the iPad versus ObamaPad video! He and my brother Pic made the video, uploaded it to YouTube, and are sitting back watching it go viral.

So far, it doesn't have as many hits as Pic's Jack Webb Schools Barack Obama video, but it's hit more of a nerve among liberals. Salon.com has a critique of it in their How the World Works section. My dad would be so pleased! I don't know whether he would have been a liberal or a conservative if he had lived to the year 2010 -- he and my mom were dyed in the wool Democrats their whole life -- but he was an unpublished writer who would have loved the ability ot the Internet to allow anyone to win an audience. He would have liked this.

Why I am a Pauline

2010-04-04T12:12:00.005-04:00

I posted a link to Sr. Anne Flanagan's article from the Chicago Tribune, Bearing the Cross of Shame, on my Facebook account. In my introduction, I called Sr. Anne my "Pauline sister" and my buddy Dave Kendrick, seriously or as a joke, said he didn't know my sister was a nun. I wound up writing a longer reply than I'd thought I would. Kinda like President Obama in answer to Doris' question about taxes. (I felt for Obama, reading that Washington Post article. I quite relate to answering with more intensity that one's interlocutors expect or even want.)

But I thought I'd archive it here:

Not a blood sister. But Sr. Anne and I are both members of the Pauline Family of religious orders and institutes founded by Giacomo Alberione. Yes, oddly enough, Rae D'Orazio -- non-Italian speaking 2nd generation Italian -- wound up a lay member of a group that has its roots completely in Italy.

The Paulines are the media nuns and priests. I met up with them at their first National Film Retreat, then joined up with them a few years later. Did a year of inquiry to see if the Pauline charism was suited to me -- oh yeah, using film, television, radio, music to communicate a gospel-eye view of the world, that was a no-brainer for me!

I entered into a formation period and discovered that Fr. Alberione incorporated a very appealing take on Jesus' saying, "I am the way, the truth and the life" into his spiritual teaching. He's got a 3-legged stool analogy of the saying. "Way" stands for Jesus' modeling of the moral and ethical way to live, "truth" for his teachings on existential reality (doctrine), and "life" for his institution of the sacraments. A stool with unbalanced legs will fall. A disciple who thinks Jesus is just an ethical teacher showing us how to live a good life will emphasize "way" to the neglect of "truth" and "life". So they will try like gangbusters to be good but without a clear understanding of how reality is constructed (fuzzy doctrine) and without sanctifying grace from the sacraments. One can make progress on actual grace alone (and many badly catechized Catholics don't even know that such categories as sanctifying and actual grace exist), but you'll be unsteady, like a stool with uneven legs.

Or you'll have people who thinks Jesus is all about doctrine, and they will emphasize "truth" to the neglect of "way" and "life". Doctrine becomes everything to them, and the imitation of Christ and devout reception of the sacraments will fall by the way. So instead of fuzzy-headed disciples you get rigid ones.

And so on. That spirituality was right up my alley. Way, truth and life also relate to the will, the intellect and the heart. Very empowering concept of discipleship.

After two years in formation, I made my Promise as a Pauline lay cooperator in Chicago six years ago. One of the best moves I ever made.

Robert Hugh Benson -- A Mirror of Shalott, The Necromancers, and beyond

2010-03-26T14:24:00.007-04:00

The edition I'm reading is from the Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult, with the greenish cover, below. The top reddish cover art makes no sense to me!

Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson, 1912

I haven't blogged in awhile, been too busy on Facebook and even Twitter. Gotta figure out how to seamlessly communicate via all three means. As one of Blessed Alberione's lay daughters, it behooves me to get up to speed with all this stuff. Especially since now that I am retired, in theory I have more time than ever to do my own communicating.

I just finished The Necromancers by Robert Hugh Benson, and recommend it as the most exciting of his books that I've read yet. Benson (1871-1914), was ordained a priest of the Church of England by his father, then Archbishop of Canterbury, then converted to Catholicism at the age of 33, becoming first a priest and later a monsignor. He enjoyed a life of priestly ministry that included a prolific writing career.

I read his book Come Rack, Come Rope about the Catholic martyrs in Elizabethan England years ago, as a teenager, before I had ever heard of the author. Then when I started getting interested in Catholic SF and fantasy, I heard of his apocalyptic novel, Lord of the World. But my introduction as an adult to his work was his two short story collections, The Light Invisible and A Mirror of Shalott. These are variously categorized as "science fiction", "fantasy", or "horror". I have lost my copy of The Light Invisible, so I don't remember much about it. A Mirror of Shalott is a series of short stories in a Canterbury Tales type of format -- a group of priests meet each night after dinner, and in turn tell the most uncanny experience of their priestly life. As with The Canterbury Tales, the stories are of uneven impact, but I am re-reading them at the moment and can testify that the opening story, "Monsignor Maxwell's Tale", is a doozy. It concerns a devout man of faith whose brother, a lukewarm Catholic, is contemplating apostacizing so as to make life more comfortable with his fiancee. What the brother does in response, and the ultimate effect of his action, makes for a chilling little tale about the nature of faith. The more significant faith is to the reader's own life, the more chilling the tale.

That last is true for all of Benson's writings. He is not much interested in external plot, but in the stirrings and workings of the soul as described by classic Catholic spiritual writers. St. John of the Cross, Thomas a Kempis, St. Francis de Sales and the other giants of Christian spirituality would be right at home with the interior lives of Benson's protagonists.

The Necromancers is the most exciting of the books I have read because it is more plot driven than even his Lord of the World, a book which attempts to describe the events of the Book of Revelation a whole century before the Left Behind books take their stab at it. The Necromancers is about a young man of the upper classes in 19th century Britain, Laurie Baxter, who falls in love with the grocer's daughter, Amy Nugent. Laurie is a recent Catholic convert, with the enthusiasm and inexperience that often characteristizes those who "swim the Tiber" as adults. His friend and near-sister (through adoption), Maggie Deronnais, a convent-bred cradle Catholic, suspects that his conversion was more a matter of aesthetics than spirituality.

The book opens as Maggie and Laurie's mother sit conversing about Laurie's state of mind as they wait for him to return from Amy Nugent's funeral. Although they had both been opposed to the match, both women recognize that Laurie was head over heels in love with Amy, and worry about his future. The very next day, a neighbor, Mrs. Stapleton, comes to tea, and tells the gathered party with enthusiasm about her recent foray into spiritualism through her meetings with and patronage of Mr. Vincent, a leading medium of the day.

That sets the stage for an exploration of grief, of the desire to re-establish connection with loved ones who have died, and of the philosophical possibilities, from skepticism to belief to obsession, raised by participation in the occult arts.

This is really a terrific piece of fiction, although those who are used to the splashier techniques of special-effects driven horror (whether in film or fiction) may be disappointed. The drama is that of the movements and feelings of the interior life.

The Catholic Church forbids its adherents to become involved in spiritualism and in attempts to contact the dead through any means other than prayer directed to God within the boundaries of the communion of saints. Benson provides a decent explanation of the rationale behind that prohibition. Is Mr. Vincent a fraud or is he for real? The book suggests that either way, Laurie is in for it.

Ellen Dore Watson makes my day - I discover a new poet

2010-03-06T13:18:00.010-05:00

Ellen Dore Watson is obviously not a new poet -- the blurb on the back of LADDER MUSIC says that she is Director of The Poetry Center at Smith College and is an editor at The Massachusetts Review. But she is new to me. One of the great delights of a used book business is the serendipity that reveals itself in every new box of old books that comes into one's greedy little hands.

LADDER MUSIC appeared in a box of books given to me by my most excellent daughter-in-law Sine, who is clearing out her bookshelves in preparation for welcoming her new baby -- she and my son's first child, my ninth grandchild. As I took up LADDER MUSIC to list it for sale, I had to browse it first. It is, after all, a book of poetry and I am a sucker for good poetry. The last half of the 20th century brought a lot of bad poetry -- or maybe there is bad poetry in every century. But for some reason many poets who gained acclaim in the century that just finished produced work that was incomprehensible at best and downright ugly at worst. I came to despair of finding beauty, imagination and intelligence fused in the poetry that was making the rounds.

LADDER MUSIC is a book of poetry that sings, lightly and without pretension. An intelligence is at work here. I am grateful to have found it. And not just because --- twice -- the poet mentions popcorn, the veritable food of Paradise.

From LADDER MUSIC:

Before Bed

The word I leave out on the stoop to shiver
like a cat that tears up a couch in the night
is forget. I don't want it in my dreams.
The dreams can be themselves terrifying or
gone in the morning, just as long as they remember
everything as long as they last. I don't stoop down
before bed as I was taught by my forgetting mother
who is learning to be gone, trying to remember
to dream as long as she lasts, like the cat on a cold stoop
dreams of a good, stuffed couch, morning's open door.
I shiver in my tears, forget in my hand, say shoo.

----------

Hummingbirds are Never Confused

A darting whir towards thin sweetness - look!
We welcome then into any arena: the blinding
still life out there where we'd like to go or
a dismal back yard full of junked bikes
or a full-tilt patio argument - all
become lightened, brightened, confused
by such goodness, apparent and fragile.
A rat looks out from under the tumble-down
house next door, eyes like rivets, thinks:
color overload in miniature, dithering.
Doesn't venture out. Okay I made him up.
What an idea, what a place to put
the other, the self. But invariably
while a bird like that hums, gyrating
its unfeathers, we find a way to glory,
then pout. Why can't we buy one?
(Why don't we know who we are?)

----------

Mykonos, Mattincus, Maceio

It's bone simple to be in three places at once
if some part of you understands bodily
rhyme. Mykonos, Mattincus, Maceio -
I am behind myself and ahead, at once
moody and clear-skied - everything equals
wraparound sun. What's down the road
looms up slowly, photogenic, in the lens of self:
goats amused by their own beards, gorgeous
rusted hulks hung with buoys, boys shinnying
for coconuts and showing their teeth. I am
the camera. My battery is song. None of these
languages is mine, but I move in them, stumbling
and hungry. Look how I needed these salty waves!

Genesis: Dominion and the Environmental Crisis of our Time (Part 1 of 2)

2010-03-03T15:22:00.001-05:00

A new discovery: Steven Ounanian. I am going to keep my eye on this young man. This is just the tip of the iceberg of his fascinating way of looking at things. Hint: he's an Andy Kaufman fan, and he fitted up a bicycle with tracking technology, and left it to be stolen, then created a bell curve of honesty out of the experiment.

http://www.stevenlevon.com

Is the Bible to blame for an over-heated, over-crowded world whose fate hangs in the balance in Copenhagen? Sir David Attenborough caused a small uproar when he told the journal Nature that the Book of Genesis, with its instruction to go forth and multiply and have dominion over the earth, had encouraged human recklessness. In two arresting visual essays by a young American film-maker, Steven Ounanian, we hear an alternative view from a range of scholars, philosophers and commentators. Taking friendly issue with Attenborough, they offer their own readings of the Creation story, with all its subtle messages about humans, nature and knowledge.

UVIC Pro-Life Club in Jeopardy

2010-02-17T17:59:00.001-05:00

Every day brings another attack on freedom of speech for pro-life advocates. Fascinating. I would be more annoyed if I did not believe that this is desperation from pro-choice folks who realize that support for abortion has no rational basis beyond the principle of might determines right.

PJTV's Andrew Klavan: Find God in 60 Days

2010-02-09T19:58:00.001-05:00

HeeHeeHeeHeeHee.

Funny, snark, with a nice trial offer.

Tim Tebow Super Bowl Ad Response

2010-02-07T19:55:00.001-05:00

Hilarious!

The sadness at the heart of Planned Parenthood of Delaware & other putative "choice affirming" groups

2010-01-31T04:42:00.006-05:00

Coming Home: Science in the Service of the Pro-Life Movement has a good article about the accusation aimed at pro-lifers that they "only care about the baby when it is in the womb." Of this charge, Dr. Nadal writes:

Pro-lifers informally and institutionally provide cribs, clothes, toys, diapers, food, job training, tutoring, mentoring for single mothers. Add to that child care, baby-sitting, and life-skills training. For those not able to keep their child, we provide adoption services. Catholic hospitals provide free pre-natal and pediatric care to get mothers launched in the right direction. We dig deep into our pockets to help these women and children.

And after 6 years of attempting to interest pro-choice advocates in collaborating with me to help decrease the number of abortions among students with unplanned pregnancies, I find a strong ring of truth to the following:

In the years that I have attended the March and stood at the Supreme Court Steps, I’ve heard literally hundreds of post-abortive women give their testimony.

NOT ONE ever said that an abortion clinic employee ever asked if she was doing this because she felt there were no other options.

NOT ONE reported a clinic employee offering assistance.

NOT ONE reported the presence of a case worker or social worker trying to ensure that the woman knew all of the many services of government and private charity.

NOT ONE reported a clinic worker trying to ascertain if this was truly a CHOICE or the woman being threatened or coerced into an abortion.

NOT ONE!!!

What I did hear repeatedly was threats from family and boyfriends, of parents dragging the girl to the abortuary, of loneliness, fear, isolation, shame, guilt, and ignorance of the reality of a baby well along in its development.

No word on pro-choicers actually educating women about their choices, empowering women to choose life by offering access to the means necessary to sustain that life nutritionally, medically and socially.

The most tragic aspect of abortion, to me, is the number of women who support its choice because they lack faith in the power of Goodness, Truth and Beauty. My mother was one such woman. I have close friends who embrace this also. They see these things as abstract, as luxuries that women caught in unwanted pregnancies cannot afford. What a tragic reversal of the real state of affairs at the Heart of Existence. Goodness, truth and beauty are the fire that warms and sustains human lives and relationships. They are not luxuries for the few, but necessities for all. Not by bread alone are we fed - but by every choice we make for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. For life.

Me & MLK, we got a thing goin' on, & we both know it's strong, but Planned Parenthood of Delaware just thinks it's wrong

2010-01-29T12:45:00.008-05:00

I friended Planned Parenthood of Delaware on Facebook because I was trying to get in touch with one of its staff members to see if we could open a line of communication between myself and other pro-lifers who protest peaceably outside their clinic in Wilmington on a weekly basis.

I accomplished my mission, but meanwhile, I started reading their Facebook Status Updates. A few days ago, this was one such update:

Planned Parenthood of Delaware wrote: This month we honor great words from a great man, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Now -- seeing as I am involved in the same kind of social activism that the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was involved (challenging the injustices in our society's legal status quo), I responded with some lines from his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," pointing out the similarities between his activism and my own. Within hours, my response had been deleted.
So I followed with another comment in the PP Facebook discussion, as follows:
Rae wrote: Ack! Someone deleted my quotes from MLK Jr's Letter from Birmingham Jail. The irony is precious. Marx dreamed of power of the press in the hands of the people. So how do you use it? To silence the voice of one witnessing to social justice! Very uncool! If you stand for truth, then you should not fear its questioning. If you stand for something else (corporate shilling perhaps), then you show an ignobility that is beneath you.

To their credit, they did not unfriend me. But then the following response appeared:
Yesterday at 1:27am • Planned Parenthood of Delaware wrote: Rae, this is a
moderated board. We have the right to block users, and delete comments when
we feel it is appropriate. If this is not acceptable to you, you have the
right, and ability to create your own Facebook forum.

To which I reply, taking the discussion to my own forum as per PP's suggestion,
where I WILL NOT stifle any pro-choice folks who want to participate:

3 hours ago • Rae Stabosz wrote: I have been writing on electronic bulletins boards since 1979, and I certainly understand and appreciate the motivation of a moderated board. That being said, there is also a certain standard governing how one exercises the power of moderation in a public forum. In those forums in which I exercise such power (and there are several), I allow open disagreement with and discussion of topics I initiate, as long as the rules of civil discourse are followed. I don't allow ad hominem attacks, obscenities directed against persons, and if I sniff a troll I'll delete them from a mile away. Since I'm not a troll, and do engage in civil discourse, I always hope for the same when I comment on a moderated board.

And in a discussion of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his social activism, I think my remarks were particularly relevant. Just because you represent "The Man" on this particular issue - ie., you represent the status quo, while I represent the committed social justice activist battling an unjust status quo -- shouldn't blind you to what the Reverend King himself would do. If you want to honor a great man, but then fall back on your "right" to block the kind of public discourse he strove to promote, you are not really honoring his legacy.

Just something you should think about.

You know, there are folks there at PP I really personally enjoy interacting with, even as antagonists. But I cannot tell you how weary I am of pro-choice folks simply not wanting to engage in a discussion of the important topic of where a pregnant woman's rights end and her unborn offspring's rights begin.

Looking forward to the Tim Tebow Superbowl ad

2010-01-28T07:29:00.005-05:00

More power to Tim Tebow and his mother for telling the story of Mom's close encounter with abortion when her son was in the womb. Like Mary of Nazareth, Mrs. Tebow valued the growing life in her womb over the dramatic changes to her life that a problem pregnancy would bring. Both women knew about and opened themselves up to the grace given to them. They trusted in the God they knew and loved to back them in choosing life over the fear or misplaced pragmatism that leads so many women to choose wrongly. Among other causes for the scourge of abortion, we should not discount the terrible legacy of two generations of abysmal catechesis about the nature and goodness of God.

The ad will tell a story of real-life people. Narrative often grabs us more than philosophy. In the abortion discussion, a well-reasoned argument based on sound moral principles is often trumped by heartfelt narratives that dramatize the very real plight of pregnant women in extremity. I welcome the opportunity to hear a similarly compelling story from the pro-life point of view.

You might want to call CBS to thank them for airing a pro-life ad. True, the ad revenue is astronomical, but in the past they have always refused to accept pro-life advertisement during the Superbowl.

The number for CBS is (212) 975-4321.

Into the streets & universities- transforming our world like the mendicants did to the 13th century.

2010-01-13T10:58:00.011-05:00

Pope Benedict XVI, in his general audience this morning, reflected on how the Dominicans and Franciscans brought a transforming example of gospel lifestyle to the intellectual hubs of 13th century society. He had some advice for us 21st century disciples also:

"Today too, though we live in a society in which 'having' often prevails over 'being', we are still receptive to examples of poverty and solidarity", Pope Benedict observed, and he recalled how Paul VI had affirmed that "the world is willing to listen to teachers when they are also witnesses. There is a lesson that must never be forgotten in the work of spreading the Gospel: we must ourselves live what we announce, be mirrors of divine charity".

The mendicant orders responded to the widespread need for religious instruction felt at the time, preaching and "dealing with topics close to people's lives, especially the practice of the theological and moral virtues, using concrete and easily understood arguments".

Because of the importance of the mendicant orders, lay institutions such as the guilds and civil authorities often consulted them. Thus Franciscans and Dominicans became "the spiritual animators of mediaeval cities, ... putting into effect a pastoral strategy that was adapted to the transformations of society".

At a time in which the cities were expanding they built their monasteries in urban areas and travelled from place to place "abandoning the principle of stability which had characterised monastic life for many centuries". To this end they adopted a new form of organisation, "giving greater importance to the order per se and to the superior general" as opposed to the autonomy which individual monasteries had enjoyed until then. "Thus they were better prepared to meet the needs of the universal Church".

Another great challenge of the age were the "cultural transformations", which gave rise to lively debate in universities. The friars did not hesitate "to enter the universities themselves, as students and teachers, erecting study centres" of their own "and profoundly influencing the development of thought".

The Holy Father concluded:
"Today too there is a 'charity of and in truth', an 'intellectual charity' that must be brought into play in order to illuminate minds and associate faith with culture. The commitment shown by Franciscans and Dominicans in mediaeval universities is an invitation to us to remain present in the places where knowledge is produced in order to throw the light of the Gospel, with respect and with conviction, on the fundamental questions that concern man, his divinity and his eternal destiny".

Weird Al: Forefather of the YouTube Spoof

2010-01-10T18:09:00.002-05:00

I don't know how I missed this article on "Weird Al" Yankovic when it first came out. But better late than never:

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/16-10/ff_weirdal

There is at least one race of Immortals in the universe, and guess who it is?

2010-01-09T08:16:00.005-05:00

Take a few deep breaths before you click on the link below. The perspective is far from the everyday hustle and flow of busy 21st century lives. Oh, and be sure to watch the video in full screen mode.

Maybe it's because I was browsing around looking for something to cleanse my palate from an overdose of Hollywood news (yes, I do follow the Industry), but I was blown away by this post titled Immortal from Intentional Disciples. Its video is from the American Museum of Natural History, its text is from Sherry Weddell sampling C.S. Lewis and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Conversion to Christianity: violation of separation of church and television?

2010-01-07T09:15:00.006-05:00

Is it obligatory for every blogger to write something about Tiger Woods?

My first thought on hearing of his fall from grace was, "I'm glad my mom's not around to see this." She was a big Tiger Woods fan. Thought it was wonderful to see a black man take the "rich white man's" sport and turn it upside down with the cool beauty of his strokes. My mom was a dyed in the wool Democrat and populist her whole life, one who was appalled when my husband started voting Republican, telling him it was a crying shame that someone who came from immigrant grandparents should be voting that way. She thought Tiger Woods was showing the Republicans what for.

It's not Tiger Wood's situation I want to write about, but the kerfluffle surrounding Brit Hume advising Tiger to turn to Christianity for forgiveness and to put his life back in order. My husband is a big Ann Coulter fan, and he pointed me to her recent article on the brouhaha of criticism (she, in usual Coulter style, calls it "howls of rage and blinking comprehension") that has followed in the wake of Hume's suggestion.

Punditry is not really my thing. But I recognize its place in human affairs. G.K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw exchanged barbs in print for years, although I don't think they were as nasty as folks get these days. And privately, they were friends.

That's an aside, mostly to make it clear that I don't really subscribe to Coulter's views about raging liberals. But I do enjoy her column when I read it. Here's the latest. And my favorite part:

On MSNBC, David Shuster invoked the "separation of
church and television" (a phrase that also doesn't appear in the Constitution),
bitterly complaining that Hume had brought up Christianity "out-of-the-blue" on
"a political talk show."

Why on earth would Hume mention religion while
discussing a public figure who had fallen from grace and was in need of
redemption and forgiveness? Boy, talk about coming out of left field!

What religion -- what topic -- induces this sort of babbling idiocy? (If
liberals really want to keep people from hearing about God, they should give Him
his own show on MSNBC.)

Most perplexing was columnist Dan Savage's
indignant accusation that Hume was claiming that Christianity "offers the best
deal -- it gives you the get-out-of-adultery-free card that other religions just
can't."

In fact, that's exactly what Christianity does. It's the best
deal in the universe.