Hungry in Spirit

An excellent conjunction of books has happened in my head such that I have a deeper understanding of being "poor in spirit" than I ever had before.

I am currently reading "The Thrill of the Chaste" (book review forthcoming) and Dawn Eden quotes a Psalm about the Lord making a dwelling for those who are hungry. As a daily prayer, I am reading from a Padre Pio devotional. In today's letter, one of St. Pio's spiritual children receives advice that to constantly feel a lack of love for God is a wonderful blessing. The Lord is not only how showing her much she needs Him, but providing motivation to continually find ways to love Him more deeply. The third book in this conjunction is "Transformation in Christ" which is the best book on how to follow Christ I have ever read (I hope to finish it soon). In it, Dietrich von Hildebrand points out many of the character flaws which stand in the way of following Jesus and what their roots are. One of the flaws is a feeling of sufficiency or completeness. To follow Christ is to always search for how you can more deeply invite Him into your life, therefore you must constantly be lacking a "full" conversion to Him on this side of Heaven so that you are prepared for a complete union with Him in Heaven.

In "Local" News

I have been trying to get this blog to relate more to the local Phily beat, so of course I have this great article about Virginia (with a Philly connection). I feel much less animus towards the local news as they strain credulity to find a local connection in a big story. I now do it too.

It seems that a priest who served in Philly during the 80s has now become Bishop of Richmond and he has a committee re-evaluating their marriage prep programs. The article seems a bit inconclusive as to what the final product will be, but the committee is going in all the right directions. I would be ecstatic to see Christopher West's program used throughout the U.S. We have an early edition of his pre-Cana materials from when he spoke at the PNFPN's conference in 2006 and it is great stuff. He understands and presents the Theology of the Body better than anyone I know.

All that being said, I'm still torn over requiring NFP classes. It is hard enough to find volunteers to teach, and to teach classes well to interested and motivated students. I can't imagine the strain on the teachers, trying to handle a room full of dozens of hostile couples. However, requiring the class does let people know that the Church is serious and contraception is wrong so it will be important work for all teachers willing to do it.

The Diocese of Richmond and all teachers of NFP are in my prayers.

Time to Talk Harry

I haven't commented on the eternal debate over Harry Potter. I have read all the books and agree with the parents' decision for any child. Kind and attentive parents can allow the child to read the book and explain that it is fiction. Other kind and attentive parents may ban the reading of the book as a means of preventing all possible negative influences which it contains.

However, I have never seen an article which discusses the meaning of the Biblical word "sorcery" as well as this article does. It is simply the most concise explanation of the Biblical condemnation of contraception (Greek: pharmakeia, often translated as "sorcery") that I know to be in existence. It covers the Catholic Church, the Church Fathers, Protestant Reformers, and secular historians in a few paragraphs, tying them together with Harry Potter (Spoiler alert!).

Please read it.

Greatest eBay item ever

Everyone should read this. I hope to have my 15 minutes of blog fame one day. Until then, I am enjoying sharing in her fame.

I love the fact that she is asked if all six children belong to her at three different times during one shopping trip. People ask the most amazingly stupid questions.

Mmmmmm...movie review

Well, being a gigantic fan of The Simpsons, I was thrilled when the movie finally hit the screen. I passed into near apoplexy when my non-wife best friend (henceforth, NWBF) volunteered to treat me to the tickets and dinner. While she didn't directly get me hooked on The Simpsons, her and I have shared many hours quoting, discussing, and alluding to it.


Since this outing was occurring a few short weeks before my NWBF's upcoming wedding, we spent dinner time and cocktail hour waxing reminiscent over our long years of friendship and looking forward to the future. In many ways, our friendship has followed the same pattern of The Simpsons TV series. Tentative at first, we were still discovering ourselves during the Season 1 and 2 of our friendship, fifth and sixth grade. The next two years of our friendship were as spectacular as Seasons 3-5. Then came the dark period of Seasons 6-7 as we started high school. Emerging from this trial of friendship during junior and senior year of high school, Seasons 8 and 9 demonstrated the glory of things to come. College and life now conspire to make our friendship hit and miss due to the difficulties of distance and family, much like Season 10 and onward are hit and miss on quality and I must patiently await for DVD so that I can see them.

By this chronology The Simpsons Movie is an exact metaphor for my NWBF's recent wedding, aside from the numerous allusions to The Simpsons which they both contained. Joyous and happy, with a brand new shine over years of history, many of the older classic moments are celebrated again. Many of the characters act in predictable ways, providing comfort over the void of years since their introduction. Dramatic trials were experienced by the lead characters and the newly added characters ran around and made everyone love life just a bit more. L'chaim!

An E5 Man

Via Play the Dad, no Be the Dad, comes this post on Ephesians 5. I like how he grapples with the always difficult "Wives submit to your husbands." verse. I have often struggled with this verse since I know it doesn't mean that I can dominate my wife, but I have been so indoctrinated by the media and social pressure that I have difficulty understanding any interpretation. I particularly like the etymology of submission and how that affected his understanding.

I would paraphrase my understanding of this verse as, "A wife should obey her husband as long as he is working on his God-given mission. Otherwise, she should fulfill her God-given mission of working for her husband's salvation by correcting him." Not all of that is in this post, I am just trying to get a handle on my understanding.

Expensive Milestones

There have been a variety of milestones around the house. I just reached the point where college kids look young, not younger, but young as in a completely different age classification than me. I have chosen not to contemplate my own age classification.

I began preparations for the party to celebrate my lovely wife's age-related milestone. This will probably be the second most expensive of all the milestones, if I can get my way.

Maria realized last week that money can be used to purchase items that Daddy and Mommy won't get for you. I forget what the item in question was, but I told her she couldn't have it. She didn't fuss or complain; she merely said that she could go ask the neighbor for money. (Our neighbor once gave Maria a few coins to put in our Lenten rice bowl.) This will probably be the most expensive of all the milestones, since Maria now enjoys shopping for shoes at the Mall.

And Amelia's milestones come so rapidly, that it is hard to distinguish them all. According to my perceptions, she grew about three inches last week. She also tripled her vocal sounds and learned how to do a high-five. These milestones cost nothing and yield a huge return in smiles.

In case you are wondering...

whatever happened to ProlifeSearch.com, you can read the exploits of my lovely wife at Lap of Luxury. I think my wife does an excellent job of being unbiased and reporting only the facts of her experience.

The Founders

An interesting article on founders of non-profits.
http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org/section/490.html

A good sign, or not

I was just perusing my Sitemeter stats and found an interesting referral. Someone found me through a Google Search on the words, "i hate natural family planning." I hope this blog was a positive experience for whoever that poor soul was. Since I passed quickly from ignorance to amazement of NFP, in the first hour of my first class, I have never had the experience of hating it.

The beautiful design of human sexuality amazes me so much, that I feel sorrow for those who pass through hatred of any part of it. Searcher, you are in my prayers.

He who shall not be named?

Via Creative Minority Report comes this sad Philly story. Now, I'm not an advertising expert but I am attentive. It seems to me that the most likely market segment to attend a Catholic School, that isn't already in attendance, is local Christians who are fed up with irreligious public school. An ad for this market would be easy to spin off if you were familiar with the jargon.

"Here are Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility, our students talk to Jesus every day."

"If you want your children to learn the beauty of God's creation, have them join us at St. John's school."

Natural Family Scandal

Via Play the Dad, Be the Dad comes this post on living the Christian life and avoiding scandal. I had never thought about our practice of breatfeeding/NFP actually leading people away from these practices. I guess it just seems natural to me, just like it seems natural to my wife to find a quiet corner and cover up to breastfeed. I can't really imagine choosing something else when such a beautiful option exists.

Salt in the Wound

Via The Dawn Patrol comes this story, telling of parents' pain so deep that I can not begin to imagine. As a father, I can vaguely come to grips with the pain involved in out-living your children. I never really understood it before fatherhood but as Maria gets older, I can grasp at a sense of the sadness I would experience if she were taken from me by the Big Guy Upstairs. I can not grasp the horror that would be involved if she were violently taken from me, by a terrorist, while she was eating pizza. I know God would care for me and I think only an infinite being could comfort such a wound.

I can only stare in wide-eyed disbelief at the grief that would be involved in seeing the face of my daughter's killer splashed about the TV screen as an ad for a documentary on terrorist life. I would not be able to handle such a "salt in the wound" with the grace that these parents do.

May God's grace fall on them. And may he teach me how to forgive such heinous sins.

Catechesis versus Method

The following question has arisen indirectly in a couple of forums recently:

"How great is the responsibility of a NFP teacher to catechize?"

My initial feeling is that the primary goal of anything we do is to lead people to God. Unfortunately, this is not easily accomplished in a direct manner. I wish it were, then I could just say, "Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel" and the converts would roll in. Ash Wednesday experience clearly teaches otherwise.

In practical experience, a roundabout approach seems more effective. For example, when a woman comes to a crisis pregnancy center, it seems unkind to baldly assert the truth directly, "If you have an abortion you will kill your unborn baby." It seems much more charitable to help her in any moral way possible, in order to encourage her to keep the child. Obviously, one can never deny the truth and must honestly answer that abortion kills a baby if directly asked.

Now, it is the duty of the bishop and his fellow priests to catechize his flock. This should be a constant and expected duty, concerning all areas of life, and occurring primarily during the homily at Mass. I would think that the second catechesis comes from the parents, especially the father. It is the parents' duty to raise their children in the Faith since they best know their children and have the time and relationship to delve into deeper questions. The third catechist would be the individual, especially in the first world where tremendous resources are available with a few mouse clicks. We each have a responsibility to form our own conscience. Experts like NFP teachers or professional apologists seem to come in last in my opinion since they serve primarily as consultants for someone who has already made a moral decision. These experts can offer direction and guidance on particulars, thereby more deeply catechizing someone who has already chosen the high road.

Personal experience teaches me that experts don't have much effect on unwilling students. For example, the only students ever to be required to take our class spent the majority of the time with tremendously negative body language and avoided all conversation after the first class. Our charitable words seemed to have some effect up until the charitable assertion that the future bride would have to stop taking the pill, then it was a freeze out.

Especially considering the growing trend of using NFP for health reasons, instead of religious ones, our charitable example is far more important than being able to expound on Humanae Vitae (as glorious as that document is). Our charitable example is a better witness than any number of words, but then again I have a Franciscan bent. I see all this as falling under Christ's injunction that without love, we are a gong clashing uselessly.

A woman who knows men

My wife is a wonderful woman and has a blog which I frequent since she is busy figuring out how to be a woman while I try to figure out manhood. Our blogs complement each other.

Via her blogroll comes this post, an excellent synopsis of much of my thought on manhood. I guess this means I am somewhere on the right track. Women are amazing at revealing the truth about men. Even Adam didn't understand himself, he was alone, until God created Eve.

Transforming Choice

So the greatest brother in the world took me to see Transformers for my birthday. It was a spectacular movie, in the sense of a special effects spectacle. It was indeed a "summer blockbuster" but I think it avoided campiness (by a micrometer or two) and told a good story by itself, all while pleasing long-standing fans like myself.

Inside jokes and reference abounded if you were familiar with the cartoon show and the original movie and some divergence was taken from those sources, but none which was unsettling. One particular divergence which I enjoyed was the relation of Autobots to Decepticons. In the cartoon, the difference was one of substance. Autobots were good and useful machines like cars and trucks and Decepticon were evil and destructive machines like fighter planes and handguns. The movie diverged from this point and made all Transformers have a common creator, the "All Spark," and they were good or bad depending on their choices.

Autobots protected humanity while Decepticons wished to destroy it. The description of the word Autobot could have easily applied to all of the Transformers since it only described their substance, not their allegiance to Optimus Prime. Whereas, the word Decepticon wasn't directly used but it was explained that Megatron deceived the Autobots and seized power. Much like fallen human nature, the choice to protect the weak or to dominate them is the choice that determines which side we are on.

Salt Lake Tribune, not sure how I feel

Here is an interesting article in the Salt Lake Tribune. I know its some Planned Parenthood flunky releasing articles with my federal tax money but at least natural family planning made a mention. I tire of the debate that NFP is not contraception.

The statement that I feel reveals the author's snobbery is towards the end, where she expresses surprise that some people don't use contraception. The pro-choice label is revealed for the lie that it is. She is not pro-choice. She does not support the choices other people make. She assumes they are ignorant of the variety of family planning "options" available to them. Or else, why would they choose to not use them?

Makes you wonder why its called "Planned Parenthood." Maybe it should be "Planned Childlessness."

Go NYTimes

Here is a good op-ed piece from the NYTimes. Not sure if she is anti-contraception or not but at least she is shoring up the defense of menstruation. That is to say, menstruation is not a disease.

I'm cool!

I tend to hate memes with the specific, mild hatred I reserve for chain letters. However, now that I was tagged by Creative Minority Report, a blog which I respect and admire, memes are like, totally cool!

The Rules:Those tagged will share 5 things they "love" about Jesus. Those tagged will tag 5 other bloggers. Those tagged will provide a link in the comments section here with their name so that others can read them.

1. I love that Jesus wept only once, enough to teach me that it is acceptable for men to occasionally weep. Also, giving me my first chosen memory verse.

2. I love that Jesus overturned the tables of the moneychangers only once, enough to teach me that anger has its place. Also, reminding me not to live in that place permanently.

3. I love that Jesus chose Peter to be the rocky rock of His Church. By this, he shows me that impetuousness and rash action can be tamed to follow the Lord.

4. I love that Jesus allowed Simon of Cyrene to help carry the cross. How gracious of Him to set an example of asking for help.

5. I love that Jesus died for us. I mean, nothing is really greater than that sacrifice.

I hearby tag: Lap of Luxury, Blah blah blah blog (who hasn't posted in too long), Mommy Log, Paul's Web Log, and Roman Catholic by Choice. Leave a comment if you actually do the meme, all the cool kids are doing it!

Yet Another Article

A good friend reminded me of this old EWTN article on fatherhood which happened to be written in Philadelphia so it got bonus points for being local interest.