A long time has passed now since Teri Schiavo has died, but for those who truly care about the care of the elderly/disabled, the issues is still of great importance.

One of the blogs I have on my blogroll on the right hand side of the blog is for Wesley J. Smith. Mr. Smith made a name for himself by writing the book “Culture of Death” in 2001 before the phrase became a media sensation. The book is not about abortion or euthenasia but about the current state of medical ethics and the transition from needs based care to “quality of life” based care. I’m told it is a very good book and I’ve heard him speak about the subject at a conference and it was very compelling, so I suggest everyone read the book (it’s on my stack to read).

In any case, on his blog one of the issues he often comments on (along with stem cells and cloning) is feeding tubes. He today re-made a point that his made many times that for some reason struck a cord with me:

Food and water are different than other kinds of medical treatments because EVERYONE, no matter who you are, WILL DIE without food and water. While the same is true for air/oxygen, the significant difference is that air is readily available at our noses in normal circumstances. So while people make comparisons between ventilators and feeding tubes, they are not equivalent. If you wanted to make an appropriate comparision, removing a feeding tube would be the same as removing a ventilator AND sealing the room so that no more oxygen can get in.

I think we all agree that sealing a room so a person can’t breath is immoral. Similarly, in the western world, refusing to provide food to ANY person, whether they be a homeless person on the street or a person who can’t swallow (because remember that all a feeding tube is, is a simple tube that goes down ones throat past where the bypass to the lungs is so that one doesn’t inhale (literally) the food), is similarly immoral.

I was reading today on a Catholic blog where the author is anticipating a major pay cut at his job and was pretty worried about how he was going to make ends meet.

What instantly popped in my head was how thankful I am for the life I have. I’ve got a stable job at a pretty good company (although not what it once was as far as employee treatment). They pay me enough that I can afford to pay for all of my family’s needs without asking my wife to contribute financially. I am able to do this and was able to purchase a beautiful home at a time when it was affordable for me to do so on a 30 year fixed morgage at a pretty good interest rate.

But even more importantly, I have a wonderful wife whom I love dearly and two incredibly wonderful boys who bring me so much joy I want 20 more of them.

There is much for me to be thankful for.

I found a great quiz. You should try it out! It’s a quiz with various statements regarding who God is. You have to try and pick the correct ones (from a Christian perspective) without picking some false ones that reflect some heresy in the early Christian Church. The one clue I will give you is that there are no 1/2 right statements so there is no need to pick anything other than the two extremes of Agree/Disagree (it’s a range of 5 between the two). The goal is be 100% Chalcedon Compliant and 0% on any of the heresies (of which there is a bunch including Arianism, Gnosticism, Adoptionist, Nestorianism, Donatism and Pelagianism).

As an FYI, Chalcedon Compliant means in compliance with the Fourth Ecumenical Council or the Council of Chalcedon held in the fall of 451 AD. For more information on the Council see here.

As I said in my vacation post, I went to my brother-in-laws wedding on Saturday.

Well there was one thing that bugged me very profoundly: the “minister”. Wendy’s family is not Catholic and although they went to a Christian Church for a number of years, it didn’t really stick and none of Wendy’s immediate family attend church on a regular basis. Tim, being 5 years younger than Wendy probably doesn’t even have many meaningful memories from going to church as a boy as he was pretty young when they peeter out.

For whatever they decided to get a minister to do the ceremony but instead of finding a church that they wanted to attend and finding a pastor associated with that church, they decided to get what I will forever more call a rent-a-minister. I doubt this guy has any formal religious training to justify the term minister (at least in the traditional American use of the term) and even more importantly, didn’t seem to view his job as being all that religious in nature. It was clear from the conversations I had with Tim, the “minister’s” planner and the “minister” that Tim and his fiancee only met to arrange the logistics and payment of the wedding ceremony. The ceremony was outside at a golf course and had no association to any church.

It was clear from the beginning of the ceremony that he didn’t know these two people and was just spouting out some canned ceremony he got from somewhere (maybe he downloaded it from the place he got his “minister license” on the Internet). Then to top things off, he read from scripture and picked about the worst verse I could think of that has the word love in it. I forget where he started, but I think he skipped the beginning of the passage or maybe just a few lines, but here it is from the beginning up until where he stopped:

“There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens.
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant.
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to tear down, and a time to build.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.
A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them; a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces.
A time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away.
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to be silent, and a time to speak.
A time to love…” (Ecclesiates 3:1-8

I’m pretty sure avoided the kill part in that passage and he definitely stopped with ‘a time to love’ because verse 8 continues:

“…and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. ”

What kind of IDIOT picks a passage from the bible in regards to marriage that is not about love but just includes that word in a long passage of positive and negative things for whick the point is “all things will come to pass”. A book that starts off “Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!” The book of Ecclesiates is a book about the transient nature of life and that we must look to a higher source for our meaning. Traditionally the Jewish people have had a hard time with the inclusion of this book in the Hebrew scriptures (which is of course the Old Testament) because many thought it over-emphasized that lack of meaning of our lives. Point being, this is not a book you should be quoting from as a sign of our earthly love for our spouse unless it is part of a larger sermon about needing to place your faith in God above all things (and that will sustain your marriage). But that’s not what he did, that’s the only scripture reference he made. In fact, outside of saying “in the presense of God” he made no indication of God having any role in the marriage in any form other than quoting from Ecclesiastes and saying “this is this couple’s time to love”. And don’t even get me started about that statment!

It really ticked me off. I would have much preferred that the ceremony just be done by a Justice of the Peace as they call them. If you’re going to deny the religious importance of a marriage by not actually being concerned with having a real minister do it, why put up the charade of a rent-a-minister? I’m sure Tim and his new wife have no idea what this “minister’s” theology is and what the religious nature of a marriage is in his book. And they don’t care. So why would they have him come and preside over their wedding as a “minister”? At least with the Justice of the Peace, all that their saying is that this ceremony is to legally bind the couple as man and wife, which is something that all couples that are getting married are interested in. But if you’re not interested in making a conscious statement about the religious nature of the marriage (and to do that it seems appropriate to me that the person performing the marriage has the same view (not just A view, but the SAME view) of the religious nature of the marriage) just make it a non-religious ceremony and get on with it. But to hire a rent-a-minister… that was an injustice to God and everyone seated there including Tim and his new wife.

As I said in my big vacation post, Wendy and I went to a small parish for our Chirstmas Mass in Oroville. Oroville is a pretty small town (20K people?) to begin with but its Catholic community is even smaller. The church only fix about 100 people. It had an old California Mission feel to it, but that’s not what was noteworthy to write about.

What was noteworthy was that despite the REALLY crummy music by three elderly ladies with guitars you could feel how close-nit the community was. Everyone knew everyone’s name and everyone knew we were visitors. They were welcoming and you could tell they were serious about their faith and understood the importance of community. I don’t get that feel at the VERY large parishes we have down here in the Sacramento area. All of these 3000 family parishes that seat 800+ people in the sanctuary and have 6 masses every Sunday (there were only two in Oroville) really create an impersonal feel. Unless one makes a conscious effort to be involved, one can go to Mass every Sunday (or not) and no one will know the difference. That wasn’t the case in Oroville.

Seeing that close-nit community made me yearn for a smaller parish. Sadly, until the Priest shortage is rectified, there is no reason to hope that we can add the 4-8 additional parishes in the Roseville/Rocklin/Granite Bay region necessary to get the more manageable community sizes that would facility actual community.

Such a shame.

In our busy lives, it is easy to let “normal” activities dictate our calendar. This is even true when we plan our vacations. How often when we’re thinking of our next vacation, does it inevitably focus on relaxation, tropical locations, Europe or the other “normal” vacations.

But what about building up our faith?

While the daily and weekly and annual patterns of our faith do a great deal to help build our relationship with God, there is something unique that comes out of explicitely taking a vacation from our regular daily lives to go on a retreat or to attend a conference for the purpose of building up our faith. Towards this end I’d like to take a moment to speak to the LA Religious Education Congress that I have attended a couple times.

The first time I attended “Congress” (as it is usually called by those who regularly attend) I was overwhelmed by the number of people there and the number of options for activities to participate in. Which Masses should I go to? Would Tridentine or Celtic be better? What evening entertainment should I try out? The concert or the prayer session? Should I get up early to have some prayer time? And of course, what workshops should I go to? There were a number of workshops that I knew off the bat that I didn’t want to attend. Things like: “Soul Formation – the Foundation For Positive Self-Esteem Synopsis” (an actual workshop for 2006). No thank you, please keep your touchy-feeliness to yourself! But beyond that I wasn’t sure what I was interested in. So, when regisitering, I dabbled here and there to try different things and get a taste of everything.

That turned out to be a very wise way to go about it. Not only did I get the opportunity to discover more about what interested me, I also got an opportunity to stretch myself into areas I was less comfortable in. I learned about things I would have never thought to learn about. I also examined areas of myself I had never thought to examine before. Doing this forced me to grow.

And that’s really what a retreat is about: growing in one’s faith.

I haven’t made it to Congress the last two years but I am going to go in 2006. For me, that’s not going to be enough conference or retreat time for 2006 so I’m looking for something else to do. I recommend to everyone to try and do at least one retreat a year. There are LOTS of retreats out there with TONS of different themes. Some are very simple and are mostly an opportunity to go somewhere and pray. Others have workshops galour and a packed schedule.

You’ll have to decide for yourself what best fits you, but I encourage you to make the effort to go, no matter where it might be. Give Congress a try if nothing else. It’s only $20 a day!

I read this news story, Ruling: Pregnant moms can harm babies at will, with horror. Yet again the mindset that until a baby is born they “aren’t a person” continues to rear its ugly head. However, it seems that we are SO blinded by this false perspective that we can’t even see when it doesn’t apply.

There is another premise of the ruling that I disagree with: that when she smoked the drugs that killed the already born child is relevant.

If a pregnant woman sets up a gun on a trip wire as she leaves the house knowing the next time the door is opened a shot will fire through the lower corner of the doorway (knowing that when her husband comes through the door the newborn in a carrier the newborn is likely to pass through the door in this location) should that woman be free from criminal prosecution when the child is killed because she set up the gun before the baby “became a person”?

Of course not!

Yes, there is a difference in this case in regards to intent, which is why the manslaughter charge is the right one instead of first degree murder. But none of this changes the fact that an action of the mother killed an ALREADY BORN child and therefore, even by our ridiculously lax standards, an “already a person” child. In other words, the fact that the child “wasn’t a person” when she smoked the drugs is not relevant because the child “became a person” before the mom’s drug use killed him.

I believe that in a world that wasn’t completely corrupted by this notion that a baby “isn’t a person” until it was born would not only see the falacy of the “isn’t a person” idiology but would have the clarity to see the false logic of the timeline loophole that is being used here.

Roe vs. Wade must end and it must end not only because it is a tragedy for unborn children but because it warps our ability to think clearly. Or as the best Catholic blogger on the planet, Mark Shea, puts it: “Sin makes you stupid”

For today’s (OK, it’s really yesterdays and there will be another one later today) reflection, I want to focus on the importance of Mass. We often hear the phrase “keep Christ in Christmas” from people who are frustrated with the over commercialization of Christmas. We hear this for good reason because many forget “the reason for the season” as they say. Heck these days Christians are fighting just to keep the word Christmas around as stores move to the slap in the face phrase “Happy Holidays”.

But lost in the phrase “keep Christ in Christmas” is the other half of the word: ‘mas’ which of course is a reference to Mass. Most people don’t know this but there used to be a number of ‘mas’ days. There was Candlemas celebrating the Presentation of Jesus in the temple as an infant. There was Michaelmas on September 29th to celebrate Michael’s victory of Lucifer. There was Childermas that commemorated the slaughter of the innocents by Herod. And there were others.

All of these celebrations/commemorations centered around Mass and with good reason. It is through Mass that Christ is made present to us in the Santuary, just like he was presented in the temple. It is through Mass that we celebrate Christ’s victory over death, just like Michael’s victory over satan. It is through Mass that we commemorate and tap into the slaughter of innocent blood in Christ that is our salvation. And finally, it is through Mass that we are able to recieve Christ in the Eucharist just as the world recieved Christ on Christmas day.

So as we prepare ourselves for the Christmas season in this season of Advent let us prepare ourselves not just for the celebation of Christ’s birth but also for that which he came into the world for: for Christ’s Mass.

(I give credit to The Fith Column’s blog entry How the Christians Stole Christmas for the inspiration for this reflection.)

It’s my plan for Advent (and yes, that is the current Church season NOT Christmas which doesn’t start until December 25th (gee, what a surprise), but I digress) to do a daily reflection on some nature of the Church and her history. This is mostly for me as a way to make the most of Advent. Sadly, it is already the 4th day of Advent, and this is my first one. Expect 3 days in the future with 2 reflections…

Today I read an article on the meaning and value of the Advent season and it was speaking of the need to do penance. He spoke of one penance he planned on doing, not eating meat on Friday, and then said, “Not much of a sacrifice, I know—especially since we’re supposed to do that every Friday throughout the year, or else undertake “another act of charity or penance,” according to an almost forgotten (but still official) decree of Pope Paul VI.”

The part of the statement that really struck me was ‘we’re supposed to do that every Friday… or else undertake “another act of charity of penance”‘. This was something I knew and had, just as the sentence said, forgotten about. See, before the 2nd Vatican council, every Catholic was obligated as a Catholic not to eat meat on Fridays all year long and not just during lent. This was an act of penance and a rememberance that Christ was killed (in the flesh) on a Friday. One of the big conclusions of the 2nd Vatican council was that there is a big risk in over-ritualizing or specifying actions for Catholics. The risk is that one may forget that these actions are not necessary for salvation but good things to do for Christ and an undue emphasis on their necessity may be placed on them. As a result of this conclusion, Pope Paul VI made the decree making meatless Fridays “optional”. However, the forgotten part of the decree was that it was only “optional” in the sense of what the weekly penance was, not that one does weekly penance.

And there-in lies the problem.

The conclusion of the 2nd Vatican council was a very good one and there is much risk to over-ritualizing and over-regulating the faith. However, there is a counter-risk as well, one that we have fallen prey to in the last 40 years. The counter risk is the failure of people to ‘undertake “another act of charity of penance”‘. See, everyone knows/remembers that we no longer HAVE to abstain from meat on Fridays but who remembers that if we choose not to abstain from meat on Fridays, we are expected to do some other form of weekly penance out of reverence for Christ’s death for us? The practical answer is: nobody.

I don’t say nobody because I want to chastize people for not upholding the faith but because it is human nature in two ways: 1. Humans are creatures of habit. 2. Humans are creatures to which peer pressure is very meaningful. We use habit routinely (yeah, I know that’s a funny sentence). We use it both to our advantage and our disadvantage. For example, I know that if I don’t schedule to play racquetball every Tuesday morning with my friend Todd and instead say, “every week when it is convenient for us, let’s play racquetball” the reality will be that we’ll end up playing infrequently. So, Todd and I play racquetball every Tuesday morning at the same time. That ritual or habit helps us to do what is good for us. Second, having that “peer pressure” of Todd waiting for me at the court is further incentive. I’m not nearly as good at lifting weights every Monday, even though I made that commitment to myself, because I’m the only one I let down. There is no peer pressure to re-inforce the habit. The reality is that a ritualized action, particularly actions that we do communally, although it risks people just going through the motions, also helps to ensure we actually do something, particularly in this era of extremely busy lives.

So, my suggestion today to all is to re-consider abstaining from meat on Fridays. Yes, it’s not required as a Catholic any more, but it is recommended and it is required that if you don’t do it, that you do something else. Are you? (I’m not.) So, let’s do it! Let’s do that weekly act of penance! And since it is something that all of us Catholics still know about and do during lent, it won’t be hard to make it a habit where my brothers and sisters in Christ can be the positive re-inforcement they should be.

This was passed on to me via e-mail this morning:

Bubba was from Alabama, and was a good ole Southern Baptist. He loved to sneak away to the race track. One day he was there betting on the ponies, and losing his shirt, when he noticed a priest step out onto the track and bless the forehead of one of the horses lining up for the 4th race. Lo and behold, this horse — a very long shot — won the race.

Bubba was most interested to see what the priest did in the next race. Sure enough, he watched the priest step out onto the track as the horses for the fifth race lined up, and placed a blessing on the forehead of one of the horses. Bubba made a beeline for the window and placed a small bet on the horse. Again, even though another long shot, the horse the priest had blessed won the race. Bubba collected his winnings and anxiously waited to see which horse the priest bestowed his blessing on for the 6th race.

The priest showed, blessed a horse, Bubba bet on it, and it won! Bubba was elated! As the day went on, the priest continued blessing one of the horses, and it always came in first. Bubba began to pull in some serious money, and by the last race, he knew his wildest dreams were going to come true. He made a quick stop at the ATM, withdrew big money and awaited the priest’s blessing that would tell him which horse to bet on. True to his pattern, the priest stepped out onto the track before the last race and blessed the forehead, eyes, ears and hooves of one of the horses.

Bubba bet every cent, and watched the horse come in dead last. He was dumbfounded. He made his way to the track, and when he found the priest, he demanded, “What happened, Father? All day you blessed horses and they won. The last race, you blessed a horse and he lost. Now I’ve lost all my savings, thanks to you!!”

The priest nodded wisely and said, “That’s the problem with you protestants …you can’t tell the difference between a simple blessing and the Last Rites.”