Archive for March, 2010

QH’s – freedom, teaching and foster care

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

More Quick Hitters (QH’s):

  • Here’s your quote of the day: “There is no absolute freedom: You can free from vice and bound to virtue or you can be free of virtue and bound to vice.” -Radio Replies. A profoundly true statement and one that reminds me of Mark Shea’s Axiom “Sin makes you stupid”.
  • Jaime Escalante died yesterday (3/30/10). In addition to saying a quick prayer for a safe passage to heaven, I wanted to share a link to a very interesting article about him: http://reason.com/archives/2002/07/01/stand-and-deliver-revisited. We all know the dramatized story in the movie “Stand and Deliver” but the truth is always more complicated than the drama and very few know the story of how it all came crashing down not long after the movie was released. To me, it’s a story of everything that is wrong with public education and worth reading.
  • There was an article yesterday in the Sacramento Bee about a new state rule limiting the number of children in a foster home, both natural and foster, to 6. As a believer in big families, it’s somewhat disappointing, but from a practical perspective, it’s hard to argue with. The foster system is a disgrace and a tragedy. The social workers are overloaded and can’t monitor the families properly and a lot of the foster parents aren’t really interested in being foster parents but just taking the $660 a month (or more for kids with additional needs) for each kid and using them for themselves. The real tragedy is the dismantling of the orphanage system, particularly the Catholic system of orphanages. While it’s not perfect, it was more efficient and actually prevented the level of abuse that kids today are receiving in the foster system (and I say that even aware of the sexual abuse issues that have rocked the Church).

Added at 2:42 PM PDT:
Oh, one additional one for the day. Today is the 5th anniversary of Terri Schiavo’s death: 3/31/05. So much is misunderstood about her condition by the general public. She wasn’t on life support, only a feeding tube. She didn’t have a will or medical statement asking to die, only her husbands word versus her parent’s word. And then there’s the details of her husband’s conflict of interest (new girlfriend with whom he’d had children, wanting to get married to her in the Catholic Church, medical account for which he’d get the balance after Terri died, etc.) that never seemed to rise to the level of public consciousness. Also, Terri wasn’t “brain dead”. She was profoundly cognitively disabled and perhaps in a persistent vegetative state (a horrible medical term if there ever was one), but not dead. Let’s pray that Terri intercedes on our behalf to ask God to guide those in her former husband’s position, that they not abuse the responsibility they have to care for, not kill, those who are profoundly disabled and in their care, so that an injustice like this may never happen again, to stop the injustices that go on every day around the country but don’t receive the publicity of Terri’s plight.

Quick hitters

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

I’m going to try and do a daily post with a bulleted list of thoughts I’ve had in the last 24 hours:

  • In CA there’s going to be a vote in November for legalizing Marijuana. On the radio this morning “Bishop Ron Allen” came on. So I tried to look up what church he was a Bishop for. I even signed up for facebook (something I’ve been avoiding) to see if his facebook page said. No dice, across the board. All I know is that he’s the president of the International Faith Based Coalition and he graduated from Trinity Bible College, which appears to be associated to the Assembly of God. I didn’t think they had Bishops though… strange.
  • Last night at RCIA there was a discussion about the latest round of pedophilia issues in the Church. Of course it’s a terrifying thing that this happened at all, but it’s just amazing to me how distorted it is. John Paul II was pretty ambivalent about doing anything outside of praying for healing and somehow he never took any heat, but now Benedict who’s been very proactive and should be considered an ally by those who want to see this rooted out is under attack. It’s just further proof that those who are advancing the agenda these days aren’t about fixing the Church, but about tearing it down. I take great comfort in the steps that have been taken in the US to prevent this problem and am optimistic that the same changes will happen in Europe too.
  • I should have my copy of “The God Delusion” by this weekend and I’ll start in with my thoughts on it shortly.

IT’S ALIVE!?!

Monday, March 29th, 2010

For anyone who’s tried to come to this blog (hi Mom!) in the last year or so they’ve seen that it hasn’t come up and has been displaying some cryptic error. I tried a number of times to fix it because I wanted to bring the blog back and be more active about posting on it. Last night I took the brute force strategy. I completely deleted the old one and installed the latest version. Then I attached the new version to the old database and…

IT’S ALIVE!?!

So, what to expect from this blog moving forward… The main reason for bringing the blog back online is that I’m going to read Richard Dawkins “The God Delusion” so that I can rebut it. I’ve heard from too many anti-religious circles how devastating it is to the idea that religion is a good thing and I’m curious to find out what his argument is. I’ll speak to what I expect it to be in a separate post.

I’ll also go back to posting on the political and religious news of the day when it’s worth reporting on. It won’t be as comprehensive as in the past, more just when I feel the need to rant. Finally, there will be more family stuff posted. Things we did, blessings received, pictures, etc.

Hopefully, you’ll be interested in visiting.