Living a Catholic Life in the Modern World
You will want to stop by the “Simply Lovely Fairs” and read through the wonderful entries by many great ladies. I am sad to see that there are no more on the list. When these started back in January March seemed a long way off, now March 19th has come and gone.
I found this at Westward Wagons Ho!and I have to share. This is the core of why I love my Church. Jesus, His work on earth: the service, the Sacraments, the history, Tradition, Scripture and the Body of Christ. This is it — beautiful, sometimes broken, always human and always divine.
There has been a lot in the news the past week and even more in blogs written about confession, both the Sacrament and the basic concept. In the news there have been two stories which have caught my eye. The first was that horrible misreporting of the Vatican announcing new, more culturally relevant sins and the second was a report on the trend to confess sins online. The Catholic Blog world has been much more rich with a variety of articles being written about Confession, first confession, the practice of the Sacrament, the renewed interest so many people are having with the act of just going in reciting sins and receiving absolution.
Now as most Catholics have picked up by now the main-stream news media is horribly out of touch when it comes to reporting on anything having to do with the Catholic Church. When it is the British Press just triple that. Amy Welbourn and Deacon Kandra had insightful things to say about this crossing of bad reporting and the secular media’s natural inclination to get fuzzy headed, silly, giddy any time they think they found something interesting to say about the Catholic faith. Dullards.
Almost as stupid is the CNN.com report on online “confession”. I wish I could say I was surprised that a national news source reported on the trend of “true confession” sites with such a religious sounding angle but at the same time showed little respect or understanding of the significance of confession in religion. It isn’t shocking simply because the press so often gets religion wrong. At least in this article they bother to actually talk to religious leaders about the sacrament vrs the online confession fad.
Around the blogs I read there has been a trend of some very fine writing about Confession in the Sacramental sense. Julie at Happy Catholic has a wonderful post and round-up of some of the best of these articles. I really encourage everyone to read them.
Over at Simple Gifts I found the above video.
I suppose it is the greatest of Christian challenges to just live for God. I know a great deal was made of Mother Teresa’s journals when they were release about ” The dark night of the soul” that long period of spiritual dryness that she, and so many great souls, faced. To me it was a blessing to know how she felt. Our world is a place where there are many dark Corners, where the light is sometimes difficult to see, or worse burning so pure and complete as to make us feel not just naked but transparent.
We are halfway through Lent and Easter is edging closer everyday. In ways this has been a very good Lent for me, in others it has felt somewhat disconnected, I guess would be the right word. I am looking forward to Easter. I can feel the journey through Lent building. When I was a child living in Eastern Oregon storms never felt sudden. You would see clouds gathering in the distance, the wind would begin to pick-up then the smell of the rain in the distance. Easter is like that for me this year a distant storm that grows and travels, I can feel it and hear it and smell it coming. I am waiting in anticipation, but I am not sure exactly what will be.
This weekend I found the video that I had originally wanted to put with this post so I am bumping it. I hope no one minds. Thanks to the Anchoress.
A couple weeks ago the Anchoress took a little break from blogging and on the way out left us with a link to an essay about Johnny Cash which can be found here. I read the essay really hopeful, ended up somewhat disappointed, but came away with a few useful thoughts. Key among these thought was this: God can bring the worst of us to moments of pure gold for His glory and for our good.
I will try to help you understand what I mean by that. One of the first few comments following the article was this, ” A rather shallow article about an unrepetant[sic] sinner. Can’t Catholic writers do better than this?” I have seen this attitude from my fellow Catholics far too often and Christians in general more times than I could remember. A slightly “holier than thou” attitude, pleading to the good that is really nothing more than thinly veiled self righteousness that smacks of deep-grained ugliness. This is not the light and saving love of Christ, liquid and vibrant, blood and flesh, fertile and open. It is a brittle, dried up attitude that claims itself superior while becoming more and more detached from the obligations of need and weakness on the human heart. It is the Pharisee and the Priest crossing to the other side of the road — tisking at the sinner, crime and the state of world while offering no balm to sooth it. And the greatest irony is the sinner they are tisking in the above comment was the one offering the balm to so many.
McMullen spends a good deal of time quoting Cash’s lyrics and relating them to his feelings as a Catholic. It is all in all an enjoyable read. But I feel it really didn’t go deep enough. There are two thoughts I feel are important.
First Cash is a man of his time. His voice spoke to men, hard working country men, men struggling with modern life and men for whom the Church had taken a feminizing turn that really turned them off. His songs struggle with faith as I am sure the man did, as many men of his generation did and many still do.
Second that Cash’s personal character and the state of his soul had very little to do with ability to serve as a tool in God’s hands. This is a thing that slips the minds of many Christians I fear. God doesn’t need us to be perfect, good, or even trying. God doesn’t need us to be in a state of grace, saved, believing or even wanting Him. He can take us while we are running at a break neck speed straight to the gates of hell and wring out of us something good. Sometimes for our souls and sometimes to save someone else.
At “Called by Name” Fr Kyle has this really great bit of thought: “One line that sticks out to me from the Fishers of Men DVD: ‘Where the faith is important, the kids pick it up, just like they do with the language.’ Make the faith important in your lives, a priority, and it will pass down to your children, whether biological or spiritual.”
My husband and I were talking about this Saturday when we drove by the synagogue. He wondered at what age boys were supposed to start covering their heads. I really don’t know. I remember seeing Jewish families with even the youngest boys wearing yarmulke tied under their chins with ribbons. What better way to form a Jewish identity than including something so culturally indicative in a child’s early life?
My two thoughts on this almost seem contradictory. Families should include their children in faith life. It should be a living, serious, important part of their lives. They should understand from the earliest years the important truths of the faith and practice in family religious activity should be expected and not optional. The second thought is that adults should stringently avoid bringing the faith down to a child’s level. Even with the laudable idea of bringing the children to greater early understanding of the faith.
Catholic by its very nature of being universal lacks a single cultural identity. But there are things that set us apart. The liturgical calendar is one. While the rest of the western world is twirling at breakneck speed in the Christmas Rush we are (ideally) sitting around lighting Advent Candles. Lent, an amusing arcane tradition amidst our neighbors, has real impact on us. Our Sacraments and prayer life are other distinctly Catholic things. We have the right and duty to live out our lives in a way that our children can see so they become a part of the day in and day out rhythm of life.
The other thing might just be a matter of personal taste, but I dislike the “Children’s Liturgy” thing. Children do not need to be taken away from the “big” Catholic mass to experience coloring sheets and musical skits. And while instruction in the faith needs to take place at the child’s level this is something that needs to be taking place in the home and in CCD. Essential truths should never be watered down. Certainly taught to the child’s level of emotional and intellectual development, but not skirted. Children need to see the faith as something for adults that they are encouraged to learn about and participate in, but not something that anyone expects them to completely get as a child. Something they can look forward into growing into a full understanding of – something important.
I have a 14 year old daughter who is severely autistic.
This has been, in ways, the defining statement of my life. My daughter is severely autistic. This morning I was reading at Real Learning and found this video : What Kind of World Do You Want .
This brought up so many conflicting emotions for me. 
Because this sentence is true and yet it is NOT true for every child. There are some, I dare say many autistic children, while they are helped with early intervention and intensive therapy, are not brought up to the level where they can lead “full and active lives”. As a parent of an autistic child I latched on very deeply to the idea that if I did enough Rachel would have a normal life. I was offered more hope than possible every year. Finally the hope hand-outs stopped but not until Rachel was in Jr high.
I think all parents hold onto a certain amount of guilt when it comes to “doing enough” for their children. Everything from baby enrichment classes to SAT prep and sports, and dance, and art, and camp. Homeschool parents get to pick up a special type of guilt being responsible for our childrens’ entire education. We can all look back at our “parent-of-the-year” moments where we over reacted or said the wrong thing. Our childrens’ failures in a very real sense feel like our parenting failures. But with autism there is a deeper sense of failing. When every story about autism published is the miracle that shows an autistic child that with love and dedication the parents where able to find the “cure” and now their child is a happy fully functioning teen or adult. Where did I go wrong? What more could I have done? I have failed my child. My child is not cured the failure is therefore mine.
My daughter is 14 and still severely autistic. Did we not try hard enough? Did we not do enough? If Rachel was dealing with Down’s Syndrome would I be looking at myself in the mirror asking these questions? Probably not, because it is well acknowledged that Down’s is a genetic disorder, there is no miracle cure. But with autism, the causes are so elusive and the hope built up so high that self recrimination becomes very reasonable.
My thought is that as autism is more studied, as the “bubble” of autism ages that we will see many many more cases where early intervention did NOT fix it. Where parents did all they could and still they are looking at the teen years with autism as a very real part of their child’s life. I don’t exactly resent those parents who have found success with early intervention and intensive therapy, but they speak very loudly and the world likes to listen to them. Those of us with sadder stories speak quietly or not at all.
But we need to speak. We need to start speaking to one another and to the media at large. Just as our children needed money and research and acceptance with their diagnoses and early intervention they also need as adults. They need safe housing, they need law enforcement to be trained so that tragedies are avoided. We need laws changed so that our adult autistic children can receive funds for their housing and treatment without parents loosing their parental rights and the right to advocate for their children or make decisions about their lives. These are problems, real problems, they need addressed every bit as much as early treatment.
There is at times a thin line between what is right and what is wrong. As Catholics we have centuries of moral theology, direction, logic, scripture, tradition and the living breathing magisterial teaching to guide us in navigating even the most baffling questions and sometimes we still have to pick carefully through the jetsam that whirls around us as science presses ahead with the question of “can we” often trumping the more important “should we”. A few months ago several friends and I were commenting that as we age we find ourselves more and more accenting to the Church’s judgement on issues of moral teaching and dogma even when we are not intellectually convinced. All out us have grown tired of inevitably being proven wrong in the long run. We had each had an issue at one point with Church teaching. We had, all being educated and sensible creatures, put our minds to work and begun researching the Church’s teaching on our issue thinking certainly we would prove ourselves right, only to slowly become convinced that we were actually wrong and the Church was right all along.
But I have also seen the opposite happen. Where someone would be so very, very certain that they were right that they couldn’t accept the reality that they could be wrong. To my mind the most honest thing for a person in such a position to do is to say, “Oh, well this can’t be right and if the Catholic Church says this then I can’t be Catholic.” and to quietly, or even raving, angry and nailing their complaints to the Cathedral door, walk away. Of course it is obvious that a good number of people don’t agree. Some even stick around and they either want to “update” the Church or they try to be more Catholic than the Pope.
The more Catholic than the Pope people bother me far worse than those who run left of center. They confuse not only loyal Catholics but those outside the church who stumble into their rants and confuse their lay organisations with the magisterial Church. You don’t see the media picking up “We Are Church” too often and confusing them for the Catholic Church… you do see them getting Bill Donohue and the Catholic League mixed up with the See and read headlines about Catholics calling for a boycott only to find out it is not the church at large, but a lay organisation. Somewhat akin to claiming that “Ohio sees massive crop failures” based on a single farm loosing its corn and potatoes.
These thoughts were brought firmly to mind last night while reading over at Confessions of a CF Husband where someone had posted a link (now deleted) to some crack pot with an MD behind his name and rosaries on his blog claiming that the medical profession vivisects people in order to harvest their organs for transplants. He goes to great lengths to point out the sections in the catechism addressing organ donation and the papal edicts to the medical community addressing end of life issues… and the does his best to apologize around them. “Brain death” is viewed as too vague, irreversible is somehow beyond his ability to grasp. What truly shocked me was finding this Dr. had also writing in other more trustworthy Catholic sources. His doubts and ideas presented there seemed much more reasonable, but placeing these issues in a light far more delicate and confusing than they need be.
The simple straight forward facts are that the CCC views organ donations as a good as long as there is consent and for postmortem donations that a mortem is reality.
2296 Organ transplants are in conformity with the moral law if the physical and psychological dangers and risks to the donor are proportionate to the good sought for the recipient. Organ donation after death is a noble and meritorious act and is to be encouraged as a expression of generous solidarity. It is not morally acceptable if the donor or his proxy has not given explicit consent. Moreover, it is not morally admissible to bring about the disabling mutilation or death of a human being, even in order to delay the death of other persons.
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Donation and transplanting of organs
83. The progress and spread of transplant medicine and surgery nowadays makes possible treatment and cure for many illnesses which, up to a short time ago, could only lead to death or, at best, a painful and limited existence.[175] This “service to life,”[176] which the donation and transplant of organs represents, shows its moral value and legitimizes medical practice. There are, however, some conditions which must be observed, particularly those regarding donors and the organs donated and implanted. Every organ or human tissue transplant requires an explant which in some way impairs the corporeal integrity of the donor
85. <Homoplastic transplants>, in which the transplant is taken from a person of the same species as the recipient, are legitimized by the principle of solidarity which joins human beings, and by charity which prompts one to give to suffering brothers and sisters.[177] “With the advent of organ transplants, begun with blood transfusions, human persons have found a way to give part of themselves, of their blood and of their bodies, so that others may continue to live. Thanks to science and to professional training and the dedication of doctors and health care workers…new and wonderful challenges are emerging. We are challenged to love our neighbor in new ways; in evangelical terms—to love ‘even unto the end’ (Jn 13:1), even if within certain limits which cannot be transgressed, limits placed by human nature itself.”[178]
In homoplastic transplants, organs may be taken either from a living donor or from a corpse.
86. In the first case the removal is legitimate provided it is a question of organs of which the explant would not constitute a serious and irreparable impairment for the donor. “One can donate only what he can deprive himself of without serious danger to his life or personal identity, and for a just and proportionate reason.”[179]
87. In the second case we are no longer concerned with a living person but a corpse. This must always be respected as a human corpse, but it no longer has the dignity of a subject and the end value of a living person. “A corpse is no longer, in the proper sense of the term, a subject of rights, because it is deprived of personality, which alone can be the subject of rights.” Hence, “to put it to useful purposes, morally blameless and even noble” is a decision “not be condemned but to be positively justified.”[180]
There must be certainty, however, that it is a corpse, to ensure that the removal of organs does not cause or even hasten death. The removal of organs from a corpse is legitimate when the certain death of the donor has been ascertained. Hence the duty of “taking steps to ensure that a corpse is not considered and treated as such before death has been duly verified.”[181]
In order that a person be considered a corpse, it is enough that cerebral death of the donor be ascertained, which consists in the “irreversible cessation of all cerebral activity.” When total cerebral death is verified with certainty, that is, after the required tests, it is licit to remove organs and also to surrogate organic functions artificially in order to keep the organs alive with a view to a transplant.[182]
The Church is, and rightly so, against many things such as fetal tissue research, IVF, abortion, euthanasia and cloning. These things violate the sanctity of life. They reduce the human person in one way or another almost always with an eye toward utility. They remove barriers that shouldn’t be taken away because then end results are ghastly for us all. But organ and tissue donations do not fall into that category. Far from devaluing life they elevate life, both the life of the donor and the life of the recipient as long as those few critical aspects are giving their full weight and importance.
Morally one life can not be shortened to save another. Not matter how hopeless the case is, no matter how desperate the need. Those aspects of the human body that are the seats of individuality, the reproductive and cognitive aspects, can not be transplanted. There must be full consent on the part of the donor and/or their proxy. When these issues are met then organ donation is a moral good, a postmortem act of generosity that extends the gifts of life and health to a fellow person. This is a beautiful and honorable thing.
Where Dr (who’s-name-I-won’t-mention) goes floundering is in his conviction that people aren’t really dead when brain function ceases. He even goes so far as to toss out his anecdotal proofs in cases where someone was “brain dead” and then came back. I know God can work miracles, but moral theology and medical science do not base general practice on miracle cases. In general if your heart will stop beating and your lungs will stop breathing with out mechanical support and your brain show no functioning then you are dead. Lazarus was brought to life after three days, but organs sitting in a morgue for three days would be useless to everyone.
Trying to frighten people off of organ donation by telling grisly tales of someone being cut open while still alive and feeling is reprehensible. How many people out of fear for themselves or a love one would hesitate at that critical moment and say “no.” Almost as bad is mixing the pot to confusion, talking about “persistent vegetate state” a term heard frequently in the tragic Teri Schrivo case leading to the idea that organ “harvesting” might occur when the donor was capable of breath and circulation on their own. Assertion that the papal documents are vauge when they are only vague to someone determined to obscure them adds confusion that might keep a Catholic wanting to do good from signing an organ donor card. All this while quoting a dozen Popes and the catechism itself to prove the agendized point that organ donation is wrong in direct contradiction to what the documents actually say.
When the only thing that is keeping my heart beating or my lungs moving is something plugged into the wall… go ahead, turn it off. In fact take any usable part of me and give it to some other person who needs it. I feel quite comfortable that the magisterial Church would laud that choice.
I was reading at Happy Catholic and she reports that The Library of Congress has set up a flickr account with some of their collection online. I am so happy. Maybe I shouldn’t be this might turn into a huge timesink.
Living Lives of Loveliness in 2008,
This looks like a great deal of fun so I am posting a friendly little reminder to myself to check it out.
Simply Catholic 