Posts belonging to Category Politics and Current Events

Just read this article about the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s plans to re-fund Planned Parenthood – very disappointing!

Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation is cutting its ties with Planned Parenthood ostensibly due to the investigations and financial inquiries into PP.

Many of us have struggled over the years, our consciences not permitting us to give to the many races and events that friends have run because of these ties since the money that Komen donates to Planned Parenthood frees up more funds for PP’s other works. This is a great step towards focusing on saving women’s lives.

(I don’t believe that Komen has changed their stance on embryonic stem cell research, though would love to know if anyone knows anything about this.)

Our pastor gave a powerful homily at Mass this morning, and continued his thoughts in the weekly bulletin – I thought that I would share some excerpts here, in the hopes that we might all prayerfully consider how we can respond courageously to the situation described below. Blessings to you this Monday morning!

Dear friends in Christ:

A week ago last Friday, January 20, two days before the 39th anniversary of the tragic Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade which has resulted in more than 50 million preventable deaths in the U.S., the Obama Administration took another step to diminish religious freedom and force Americans to violate their consciences. Against a huge outcry, the Obama Administration’s Health and Human Services Department has upheld its earlier decision to force all employers to pay for and provide sterilization, abortifacents (abortion producing drugs) and contraceptives in their health insurance coverage with only the most narrow exemption clause. This decision is being denounced and condemned by our own archbishop, the entirety of the Catholic bishops in the United States, religious leaders of other faiths, a growing number of democratic supporters of the president and many others who cherish the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence (you may read the bishops’ statement at www.usccb.org).

…In speaking to a group of American bishops on January 18, two days before the Obama Administration’s latest assault on the freedom and rights of Americans, Pope Benedict XVI said:

“At the heart of every culture, whether perceived or not, is a consensus about the nature of reality and the moral good and thus about the conditions for human flourishing. In America, that consensus enshrined in your nation’s founding documents, was grounded in a worldview shaped not only by faith but a commitment to certain ethical principals deriving from nature and nature’s God. Today that consensus has eroded significantly in the face of powerful new cultural currents which are not only directly opposed to core moral teachings of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but increasingly hostile to Christianity as such.”

…Some may ask, “what is the big deal?” The big deal is this – when foundational principles are assaulted and eroded, sooner or later the house comes tumbling down. Our country has survived, grown and flourished because these principles have been honored, defended and respected. America’s greatness has been in the liberty and the rights that her citizens have enjoyed…

Since there is a noticeable dearth of October baseball posts from MaryAlice and Red this year and we all miss Mr. MA’s poetry, I will fill in the void before it’s too late.

I grew up in St. Louis, my husband was born in Dallas. Our family has an AL and an NL team that we root for…the Rangers and the Cardinals. So this World Series  is epic…determining bragging rights for all future family Thanksgivings, Christmases, etc. for possibly the rest of our lives. There is a lot riding on it!

I admit I am exhausted. We have been staying up until all hours of the night for the last few weeks (can you say extra innings?), living and dying on each pitch.

Our homeschool days begin by watching the highlights of the previous night’s game.

My husband may even be more moody than me, his pregnant wife, depending on what the preceding 24 hours have wrought.

My children now know more baseball stats than addition tables, more about pitching rotations than the chronology of ancient Egypt (ahem, which is actually on the syllabus).

I have lost track of all the bets between our two families.

My 4 year old woke up yelling for me in the middle of the night yesterday. I ran in thinking that he was having a nightmare and he was choking back tears as he said that he forgot to watch the World Series highlights from the night before.  I told him to go back to bed.

Both sets of grandparents are trying to outdo each other in buying the childrens’ loyalty to their teams. We have stuffed Fredbirds, Rangers bats, and more t-shirts and hats that I can keep track of.

So, one day very soon, this epic battle will be decided, my husband will hopefully return to the real world, my children to normal schooling and I will get a decent night’s sleep again.

And one side of the family will have the final word on baseball for ever after.

But until then, it is game on. And it is crazy fun. I have both my Cardinals and Rangers shirts at the ready. May the better team prevail!!

Pope Benedict XVI praying at Ground Zero on April 20th, 2008

The priest this morning gave a beautiful homily in honor of the memorial of September 11th, 2001. Amongst other things, he directed us to the question of why we aim to seek God in all circumstances, and how we can do this. He recalled the days surrounding 9/11/01 – the images of mothers running with their children, firemen covered in ashes from head to foot, the towers crumbling to the ground before our eyes. He reminded us of the bravery and courage of so many Americans on that day, of the tragedy and suffering, the lives lost and the countless others affected by their loss, and of the remarkable determination and strength shown by rescue workers.

Our priest concluded by saying that those who were most successful at seeking, and finding, God amidst the extraordinary tragedy of 9/11 were those who also aimed to seek, and find, God in the ordinary circumstances of everyday life. And so must we, too, aim to seek, and find, God in the circumstances of our everyday lives, so that we may also see Him working in the extraordinary times of joy and tragedy in our lives. Each day, ordinary people commit small acts of courage and heroism, and these are just as significant as the extraordinary ones. Indeed, as parents we can do this each day as we strive for peace in our families, as we do our best to rise above our own inclinations in order to do God’s work, and as we persevere in showing charity towards our spouse and children. I have often been encouraged by the acts of heroism that I observe in the lives of other wives and mothers, just as I have been encouraged and inspired by the remarkable courage shown by the heroes of September 11th, 2001.

May God bless and guide America, now and always. And to those who lost loved ones on 9/11, my prayers are with you and your family.

Last Tuesday I got a call from Red. She immediately let me know that she was ok and B-Mama was ok. I was about to let her know how our Tuesday was going as well, which was apparently not the correct response and she asked, “You know about the earthquake, right?”

I was trying to process the fact that to my knowledge both ladies were at home on the east coast and asked Red to let me know what on earth was going on.

This is fairly indicative of my grasp on current events at this stage. I used to live and breathe the 24 hour news cycle for my jobs at the State Department and in politics. Now, most days I am totally cut off from the world at large.

We have one child who suffers from anxiety so I cannot listen to the radio in the car or watch the news when I am making dinner. The stories and images are something that I must shelter him from at this point.

Quite frankly, I am too tired by the time the kids are down and the house is cleaned up to apply my brain in any way and usually the last thing I want to do is sit in front of the computer and read the news.

So how do you all keep up with current events? I’m covered on sports, because I get that information second-hand as it passes from my husband to sons. But I have a hard time keeping up with the rest of the world. For example, why does Rick Perry get such a positive response from Republicans outside of Texas? I wish I knew. The war, Libya, health care the economy…

I would like to be able to engage in meaningful conversations about the state of the world, but how to keep up?

As you all know by now, U.S. Navy SEALS found and killed Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the September 11^th attacks and the “spiritual” leader of Al Queda, on Sunday, May 1^st. Shortly after the news of his death was announced, spontaneous street parties formed outside of the White House, complete with college kids drinking beer and chanting “U-S-A, U-S-A.” President Obama stated that “justice has been served” with Osama bin Laden’s death, and this sentiment was echoed in many interviews that I heard on the radio today. Clearly, people around the world feel not only a great sense of relief that this most-wanted terrorist is dead, but also a sense of satisfaction that revenge has finally been done against this man who killed so many innocent people.

So my question to myself, and to all of you, is this: Is it ever appropriate for a Christian to celebrate the death of another, and what is the appropriate response to Osama bin Laden’s death?

To help me in answering this question, I looked to some of the experts. In a brief statement on the morning of May 2^nd, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said this:

“Osama bin Laden, as we all know, bore the most serious responsibility for spreading divisions and hatred among populations, causing the deaths of innumerable people, and manipulating religions to this end…

In the face of a man’s death, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibilities of each person before God and before men, and hopes and works so that every event may be the occasion for further growth of peace and not of hatred.” (Vatican, May 2, 2011)

In another article published by NPR’s Linton Weeks on May 2^nd, a campus minister named Mike Hayes stated that “the celebrations in the streets were [not] our finest moment as Americans, and reminded me much of the anger I felt at seeing Afghans dancing in the streets at the fall of the Towers on that dreaded day. We are called to forgiveness. And that is the only way that we can truly be free. Holding onto our hatred keeps us in slavery to bin Laden’s madness and gives the terrorists continued power over us.”

In the same NPR article, Harvard Professor Christine Korsgaard makes the observation that “if we confuse the desire to defeat an enemy with the desire for retribution against a criminal, we risk forming attitudes that are unjustifiable and ugly – the attitude that our enemy’s death is not merely a means to disabling him, but is in itself a kind of a victory for us, or perhaps even the attitude that our enemy deserves death because he is our enemy…It is important not to confuse the desire for retribution with the desire to defeat an enemy…If we have any feeling of victory or triumph in the case, it should be because we have succeeded in disabling him – not because he is dead” (National Public Radio, May 2, 2011).

In summary, the Christian response to Osama bin Laden’s death should be one of deep personal reflection on one’s own responsibility before God and before men, and a desire for increased peace and reconciliation rather than division and hatred. While we feel a natural sense of relief that Osama bin Laden has finally been disabled, and that he will no longer be able to orchestrate monstrous crimes against humanity, we must never confuse our desire to defeat him with our desire for revenge.

Our President made a tough call as the Commander in Chief, and the decision he made was the one that he felt was in the best interest of the United States of America. I am confident that he, in collaboration with the leaders of our Armed Forces and intelligence agencies, made the most informed decision that he was able to make, and we will never know how many acts of violence may have been prevented because of bin Laden’s death. However, as Americans we must honor those who died on September 11^th, 2001 by working for continued peace and true justice in the world. As Mike Hayes said, “the celebrations in the streets were [not] our finest hour” (NPR 5/2/11). We can be relieved and glad that bin Laden has been defeated, but we should not rejoice in a spirit of vengeance over his death. We should, in fact, be praying for his soul. This event should cause us to humble ourselves before God, asking Him how He would have us serve Him and His People, and begging His mercy and forgiveness for all of the times that we have contributed to the evil in this world.

What are your thoughts and reactions on this matter? Let’s have an honest and civil discussion, remembering to be charitable to one another…

She was gorgeous, the whole thing was timeless, the music was amazing, the homily was fantastic, I loved this wedding!

I am sure that many of you have seen this column in the New York Times which reports the American Academy of Pediatrics updated advice on rear facing car seats.  We got similar advice from one doctor somewhere along the way, to keep the child rear facing as long as possible and to use height and weight rather than age as a guideline for use of car seats and boosters.  We are pretty intense about our carseats, but we have not always been able to follow this advice, perhaps because we just thought it was overly conservative.  I mean, it sounds like, based on the “orphan seat” quote, that we should just ALL be rear facing in the car, and in five point harnesses.  So where do we draw the line between safety and convenience?

My children are huge, PT was 20 pounds at 4 months, so we had to buy a bigger carseat to keep him rear facing even until age 1.  These days he is nine years old and 4’11″, 90 pounds.  We have set a very standard “graduate from your booster” rule at age 8, the kids do think of it as a milestone, but 4’9″ is a pretty tall height recommendation, I think that this will keep many kids in their boosters long past age 8.  I had to buy a bigger car to accomodate 6 carseats/boosters, because even a larger mini-van didn’t fit the extra width of the carseats.  I know that others have decided to just move their kids out of the boosters sooner to make the Odyssey work.  My kids are really well conditioned to the car seat situation, the older ones have a complete freak out if they are asked to sit in a seat that has only a lap-belt, they respond as though I had asked them to juggle knives.

And then I remember the beginning of the seat belt movement, and how my parents had some work to do to convince us, as school age children, to buckle up at all.

I think it will be interesting to see how quickly, without legislation, rear facing car seats to age 2 becomes the norm.  Will information from pediatricians and nurses be enough, along with a collective guilt/responsibility movement in the Mommysphere, to get us all to change?

“That special power of loving that belongs to a woman is seen most clearly when she becomes a mother. Motherhood is the gift of God to women. How grateful we must be to God for this wonderful gift that brings such joy to the whole world, women and men alike! Yet we can destroy this gift of motherhood, especially by the evil of abortion, but also by thinking that other things like jobs or positions are more important than loving, than giving oneself to others. No job, no plans, no possessions, no idea of “freedom” can take the place of love. So anything that destroys God’s gift of motherhood destroys His most precious gift to women– the ability to love as a woman.”
~Mother Teresa

It’s cold outside, and I’m thinking and praying for all those Marching at our nation’s capitol today.  Please take an extra moment today to pray for an end to abortion in our country.