Losing Heart

I am sitting here, listening to yet another pounding rain, watching election returns.

I have been praying for weeks that God would please not give us what we deserve, which would be another four years of Obama, the continued acceleration of the destruction of the unborn, disastrous overseas policy, lies, cozying up to Comrade Putin (who seems increasingly oblivious to the end of the Cold War), the ruin of the economy, the spreading persecution and villification of anyone who dares say homosexual behavior is wrong, the vast expansion of the GIMME GIMME GIMME welfare/entitlement state, etc., etc.

On Facebook, where my husband maintains a very limited personal account, a number of acquaintances have come up with such gems as, “The Republicans’ support is all stupid, white men; doesn’t that explain a lot?”  Wow… let me sit and ponder that one.  With all those degrees, that’s really all the logic she could muster?  My opinion of advanced degrees and certain “prestigious” universities continues to plummet as I meet women with lots of framed paper on their walls and not one ounce of sense, but an overarching fear of being called our for it, masked by an obnoxiously loud and strident proclamation of how smart they are for not being like one of those stupid pro-lifers and/or conservatives.  A complaint about the Republican platform would be fine, but this is just middle school name calling.

Of course, Facebook has also hosted its share of general rants about how Romney should ask women what they think about contraception.  Well, I’m a woman, last I checked (I know, I know: “She’s not a woman!  She’s a Republican!” as the line went about Palin), and I think contraception is about the stupidest thing we’ve done with technology.  We managed to strangle our future generations while wrecking havoc in the stability of our own (divorce rates follow the availability of contraception, and it doesn’t go down, like contraceptives’ proponents say), all in one fell swoop.  How’s that for scientific efficiency?  And then, even though Hugh Hefner embraced contraceptives as the greatest gift to lust-ridden, irresponsible misogynist pigs everywhere… somehow, women still were convinced that they had to have contraceptives for their own good.

America, the Jesuit magazine for “thinking” (which is code for “dissenting”) Catholics, and the Huffington Post (almost equally useless in their ability to identify or promulgate sound Catholic doctrine) apparently both ran articles explaining to Catholics why Obama (since all Democrats are better for the economy, and abortion is really just about financial inability to raise a child) is really the more pro-life choice than Romney (who hates women and wouldn’t really have anything to do with the legality of abortion, you know).  Scarily, some people actually reposted these articles as a “something to make you think” kind of thing.  Yes, it makes me think we’re pretty stupid to accept that “financial hardship” is the real reason for the abortion, and not actually a symptom of the disappearing father, embarassed or coercive parents, unfeeling school administrators, etc. who all made it painfully clear to the pregnant mother that they would abandon her, penniless and homeless, unless she got the abortion and stopped making demands on them.  And yeah, it makes me think… that catechesis in the Catholic Church in this country has absolutely and almost universally stunk, quite literally, to high heaven for decades, so that we’ve turned out a bunch of religiously illiterate adults who can’t perceive the moral difference between government handouts being somewhat decreased and government-funded murder.

And then we promoted some of those adults to the head of CCD programs and parishes, where they spout about the unfairness of working conditions in Nike factories in Asia and the evil, hard-hearted, poor-hating jerks who argued against Obamacare… but NEVER utter one word about the millions dying every year around the globe and around the corner because of the evil of abortion.

Of course, these people were shocked- absolutely flabergasted!- to find out that those crazy, extremist pro-lifers were right about Obamacare being doomed to bring with it mandatory abortions and contraception for everyone, religious objections be damned.  (I’m not holding my breath for an apology.  Apparently, being liberal means never having to admit you were wrong about the actual long-term consequences of your ill-considered idealistic actions.  At least the bishops finally realized the danger they were in and sued the government over the HHS mandate.)

This morning, I spent two and a half hours in line to vote down here in southeastern Virginia.  Our polling place made the local news, and, sadly, we weren’t the worst of it.  (Four years ago, the line was outside for the first hour, and the wait took more like 3.5 hours.)  Two extra computers for checking voter registration finally showed up after we’d been in line for two hours and had only finally made it to the far end of the school cafeteria from the voting booths.  (Yes, I had all four of my kids with me.  They were remarkably good, something I was very thankful for.)

The polls tell us that many people only made up their minds about who they’d vote for in the last few weeks.

It would seem more people have solid opinions about who they root for on “Jersey Shore” or in the “Twilight” series than in politics.

It sure looks like a huge chunk of the U.S. population thinks the government owes them and/or others, not that they have the responsibility to work to provide for themselves, their families, and the poor in their own communities.  (Yes, Vice President Biden, I’m talking to you.  Crap, I give away more money in a month than you did in a year as a senator, and I know my household makes a heck of a lot less than yours.  No, Catholic social teaching does NOT support the idea that voting to give away other people’s tax money to programs for the poor is the same as tithing, the CCHD notwithstanding.)

It would also seem that most women, especially “educated” women, are dumb enough to believe that they have to vote Democratic, or else they’ll be seen as stupid.  Or not worthy of their “lady parts”.  Or that they’ll be chained to the kitchen sink, barefoot, and forced to have babies until they die, while being deprived of proper reading material, like the HuffPo.

I’d like to think we were smarter than this, that a clear explanation of things would open eyes, that we would not fall to what John Adams said could ruin our country: lack of morals and the realization that we could vote ourselves money out of the public treasury.  The election should be obvious and not close at all, if we still remembered those things that made our nation great (faith, the rule of law equally for all, civic involvement, personal as well as group responsibility and charity, etc.).  No matter who wins tonight, this election is too close to be excusable.  Everything in our history says we should be smarter than this.

Thank God, I am solidly aware that my true citizenship is not here, that my deepest loyalties are not to the United States of America, and that all man-made kingdoms will fall and fade, otherwise, I would despair.  (Besides, I learned more than what my pitiful CCD program bothered to teach me, so I also know that despair is expressly forbidden; it is a sin against God’s goodness.  I have thanked God and blessed the Archdiocese for the Military Services repeatedly over the years for those marvelous, holy chaplains assigned to the Naval Academy.)

But I am losing heart in the power of words, logic, and even personal example to change most peoples’ minds.

Kinda a problem for someone trying to keep up a blog.

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Where we have failed

(This was set aside in the “draft” folder for almost two years, presented tonight because I still haven’t gotten around to writing up my notes on the homeschooling conference.  And I’m a bit obsessive about keeping things neat, and that full folder of unpublished drafts bugs me.  And I don’t want to talk about the train wreck that our favorite homeschooler park playdate group just suddenly turned into.  Power grabs, Catholic bashing, demands for fees, etc.  Very ugly.  Anybody know any nice, unapologetically Catholic homeschooler groups in SE Virginia?)

The Catholic Church in this country is seriously astray on social justice issues.

Yes, we still run soup kitchens, crisis pregnancy centers, etc.  We have for centuries.  The Catholic Church runs hospitals, schools, orphanages, family counseling centers, and financial assistance offices all over the world.  It is part of our mission.  We don’t demand that people convert, or even require them to sit still for a sermon before we help.  If you need help, we’re just about everywhere, ready to help.

However, we also have seen a heavy push in America to encourage the government to take over functions that were so often historically the province of churches and charitable organizations.  The recent flap over the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) funding pro-gay, pro-abortion organizations is only the tip of the iceberg.  The much larger problem it that the entire goal of the CCHD is not to fund charitable work but to fund lobbying work to encourage the government to spend more on entitlement programs… and that’s not really what they tell the parishoners who are exhorted to donate.

Why is government takeover a good thing?  Why is this passing as Catholic teaching?

What happened to exhorting people to be charitable?  That’s been as lacking from our pulpit as discussions of abortion.  Maybe your parish is better about this than mine, but I’m betting not.  This is why the Catholics in public office have such abysmal charity records: they think they did their charity by getting the government to spend my money and yours on welfare and other programs aimed at helping the poor.

I forget where I read it, but a commenter on a related blog post somewhere pointed out that if the USCCB and all the diocesan social justice committees would spend half their energy on more favorable tax breaks for families with children, instead of on socializing welfare after the Church has been repeatedly burned by being forced to provide adoption services for gays or contraceptives in the nuns’ healthcare plan (shouldn’t we know best of anyone what happens when the government takes over?)… well, we could’ve done a lot more good.

The phrase “social justice” was taken from the (mostly) condemned liberation theology movement in Central and South America.  (Liberation Theology had originated elsewhere, but it’s worst manifestation in the Catholic Church was in those areas.)  Liberation theology seeks to combine Christianity with Marxist economic thought, encouraging class warfare and villifying “the rich” while extolling the virtue of the poor.  (I am not denying that voluntarily embracing poverty is a strong witness.  But I do not assume that all poor people are virtuous because of their poverty.)

Contrary to those who want to complain that Pope John Paul II “saw communists everywhere” because of his experiences in Soviet-dominated Poland, the truth is that he sought to take what was good and useful from liberation theology (care for the poor, focus not just on poverty but the unjust systems that cause it, etc.).  Perhaps some people missed that he also condemned the class warfare, poor-can-do-no-wrong, all-rich-are-damned parts of liberation theology.  Unfortunately, some of us ordinary Catholics in the pews have too often had cause to complain that the Marxism is creeping back in, sometimes none too subtly.

It would seriously do us all a lot of good to re-read Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things”), Centesimus Annus (“A Hundred Years”), and Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate (“Charity in Truth”).

(PHW: I just found this post in the bottom of the “draft” folder, never published.  I wrote it almost two years ago.  Funny how all those pro-lifers saying, “If you accept this universal health care takeover by the government it will bite you in the butt!  No matter what they said, it will wind up mandating all legal medical procedures, and you aren’t going to like it, but there will be no way left to fight!”  Really, I do NOT enjoy saying, “We told you so…”  Maybe, after the current fracas is resolved, the issues of class warfare and the overreach of big government (especially in social justice programs) will be discussed in the Church.)

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Religious Freedom Rally: June 8!

Threats against life and against the consciences of those who say “yes” to life must be met with timely and unwavering action, in our families and institutions, and, yes, in the public square.

- Cardinal DiNardo, vigil of the March for Life, 2012

On Friday, at noon, there will be coordinated, nation-wide rallies in support of religious freedom.  The list of cities participating is available at Stand Up For Religious Freedom.

This is not a “Catholic thing”.  If one group’s rights are trampled, nobody’s rights are safe.  Our founders argued for religious toleration for all faiths, even though many of them were certainly strongly anti-Catholic.  They were wise enough to know that if one group can be singled out for repression, then the list may be expanded to include others.  It had happened in England; first, the Catholics were arrested, fined, and harrassed into emigrating or giving up their faith.  Next, it was the other dissenters: the Quakers, Puritans, and others who disagreed with a state-run church.  You may notice that a lot of these people fled to the U.S. to find religious freedom.

The media has painted this as “those crazy papists, again!”  Yes, anti-Catholicism is alive and well in this country, and many will be persuaded by the coverage to believe this is just a “stupid Catholics being unreasonable” thing that can be safely ignored.  It isn’t “just a Catholic thing”, but don’t take my word for it.  Dr. James Dobson has written a strong statement against compliance with the HHS mandate.  Chuck Colson, may he rest in peace, adamantly opposed the HHS mandate.  Many other religious leaders, Christian and otherwise, have joined in saying that all Americans must stand up and oppose this, no matter what you believe about contraception.

“Freedom of religion” does not simply mean that I can worship however I please, as long as I don’t let anyone know about it in public by my words or actions.  My freedom of religion does not end as soon as I say or believe something that the government deems inappropriate.  My freedom of religion is not contingent on my ability to afford a fine when my beliefs run afoul of what the government has declared legal.

But if my freedom of religion can be circumscribed this way, so can yours.

It’s an hour.  Get out there.  This Friday, at noon.

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HHS mandate, part 2

I have an irrate commenter who is very good at verbosely rattling off President Obama’s talking points.  In short:

• nobody is forcing religious employers to pay for contraceptives; the insurance companies will pay for them
• it isn’t true that anybody is forcing anyone to buy contraceptives at all: you could just pay the fine/assessment/tax/whatever Obama is calling it this week
• you people need to stop believing everything the bishops tell you

Hmmm.  I could make snarky comments about him, but I’ll just make a lazy post by copying my reply.

Ok, so here’s the HHS statement on its final ruling.  Yeah, that’s what I said it said, thanks.

You may note that it clearly states that all health insurance plans that do not qualify for an exemption must provide contraceptive services.  Even those who qualify for an examption and don’t provide contraceptives will probably be required, the statement says, to inform their employees about where to get contraceptives for free.

So, every Catholic school, hospital and charity will be required to provide contraception (because they don’t fit under the new, narrow definition of a “religious” entity).  Even parishes and convents that fit under the definition should be aware that HHS is already contemplating how to force them to promote contraception to their employees.  The so-called compromise only means that these institutions will be forced to buy insurance that, for “free”, provides contraceptives.  NEWS FLASH: when the hotel says the wi-fi and breakfast are “free”, they aren’t; you’re paying for it, they just add it to the room price.  When the insurance company says, “Sure, we provide contraceptives for free,” um, no, YOU’RE PAYING FOR THAT.

(And you’re happy that dioceses will be forced to buy insurance from someone else?  Why?  Adding the bureaucracy of an insurance company won’t make health insurance cheaper for the employees.  Is it because the government can bully the insurance companies more easily?  Or are you just anti-Catholic and want Catholics to please keep their unauthorized opinions to themselves, unless they’re standing in a church?)

And, holy crap!  how generous!, HHS has allowed that those institutions that do not fit under the definition but have objections can have an extra year to, as Cardinal Dolan put it, “Figure out how to violate our consciences,” as long as they prove that they even qualify for the extension.

The last time I checked, in this country, we do not generally give out rights only to those who can PAY THE FINES FOR THEM.  If you have to pay a fine for it, it ISN’T RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.  I am not interested in being a dhimmi in my own country, thank you very much.

Yes, I’m yelling.  Here’s my short version:

The federal government has a definition of what constituted a religious institution; this administration chose to use a definition that excludes most religious institutions.  Why?  Are they trying to drive religious institutions out of the public square?

If I pay for insurance that provides contraceptives, I am directly complicit in something I hold to be sinful, no matter how the accounting is done (this has nothing to do with paying taxes; that is a much more remote connection between my money and behavior I may hold to be immoral).  So, no, the latest “compromise” isn’t worth anything.

If I have to pay a fine to exercise my religious freedom, then my “right” has been reduced to a calculation of how much money the government can get out of me, money that the government will directly use to fund something I object strongly to.  And once I’m out of money, my right to religious freedom is gone.  Somehow, I seem to remember from high school government class that that is not how our Bill of Rights is supposed to work.  (But Obama was a Constitutional law prof; I’m sure he’ll tell us that, since he sees the Constitution as a living document, “bill” must be reinterpreted in the modern way, so it now means, “You get rights, and the government will send you a bill.”)

And if you think, “Well, I don’t care about contraception; I want it covered,” then please consider what else is legal that you or your church might object to funding: abortion, sex-change operations, and euthanasia.  If they force the Catholics to bow (and we are the largest single denomination in this country and our hospitals care for 1/6 of American patients), do you think they are going to stop here?

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My country…

“My country, right or wrong,” is a thing no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case.  It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.”  — G.K. Chesterton

 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.  – First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

As Christians aware of our history (and I’m not at all sure that most of us are), we have frequently had cause to love the countries we live in while fighting their current stupidities or evils.  If we are aware of the histories of official government persecution or blind eyes to persecution (for Catholics, this would include Elizabeth I’s police state, the invasion of Maryland while it was still a colony, and repeated instances of the destruction of Catholic institutions and murder of Catholics in the U.S.); we certainly have grounds to expect the future might hold problems in a similar vein, prompting a pre-emptive promise to love our country, in spite of its failings.

And so, we come to the current “desperate case”:

In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences. 

– Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York City

I am honestly horrified that the nation I have always loved has come to this hateful and radical step in religious intolerance.

- Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria

In spite of a “compromise” that still meant everyone would be paying for contraceptives and abortions (we’d just hide the accounting, and, no, really, this time we’ll put it into law, unlike that last promise we made to the pro-life Democrats who voted for the health care bill in the first place.  Really!), the HHS mandate is still a violation of religious liberty.

The Amish, who have religious objections to insurance, get an exemption from the plan.  They also, we learned while on vacation in the area around Lancaster, PA, get an exemption from Social Security taxes, since they don’t take the payouts, relying instead on their children and their own savings when they retire, which they don’t do very early.  (Gee, I’m not expecting to get a payout from Social Security, can I opt out of that tax and invest my own money, too?)

Catholics, however, do not get an exemption from the new health care law.  The only religious organizations exempt from paying for contraceptives they believe to be sinful are actual churches.  The definition specifies that the religious exemption is only for those organizations who employ and serve almost exclusively their co-religionists.  The school the church runs will have to pay for contraceptives.  The diocese that runs soup kitchens and counseling services will have to pay for contraceptives.  Heck, if your parish is considered a mission parish and is evangelizing a less-Catholic area and has a lot of non-Catholic participants at mass, you might not really be “religious” enough under the definition the Obama administration has chosen to use.  (Remember the howling about all the “the secretary shall define”, “the secretary shall decide”, etc. vagueness in the massive health care bill?  If it’s that huge, and still contains all this leeway, what are they hiding?  Well, here’s where it comes to bite us.  Just like the pro-lifers were saying all along.)

The lawsuits against the federal government are piling up.  Several major Protestant leaders have stepped up to support the Catholic Church (and I should note that Catholics aren’t the only church that has objections to contraception, although all the major Protestant denominations abandonned their bans on contraception by the mid-1900′s, starting with the Anglicans in 1930 at their regular Lambeth Conference).  There are multiple websites up to collect signatures against the government mandate, including StopHHS.

I seriously hope the U.S. government gets trounced in court… except that my tax dollars are being spent to attack my church and to defend this idiotic law.

And right now, while I love my country and am very proud of our troops, especially this Memorial Day weekend, I still feel about like some poor daughter having to haul her drunk mother home from the bar, yet again, to the jeers of the neighbors.  This is when you say, “My country, right or wrong,” and it makes your eyes sting with tears to think of how horribly, desperately astray my dear country has gone.

You grit your teeth, say it anyways, and pray that your mother and your country sober up and straighten out again, knowing that you’ll probably have to say it again under similar circumstances, even as you pray you don’t.

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Not an ending, but a new beginning

At long last, Chen Guangcheng and his immediate family are safe in America.

The Chinese government, of course, has now sentenced his nephew to death for defending his family during a nighttime raid by police.  (He is accused of murder.)  Other family members and friends of Chen have been arrested, detained, and harrassed.  Without outside pressure, this is likely to continue, in an effort to discredit Chen and his message.

The U.S., ever eager in this administration to bow to all the wrong people, didn’t jump to Chen’s aid when he escaped his years-long house arrest and arrived at the U.S. embassy several weeks ago.  Instead, the embassy officials told Chen to go ahead and leave to get medical attention.  (And, right now, anyone who ever received any training on standing inport deck watch in the Navy is groaning; once someone has taken refuge on board, you do NOT LET THEM LEAVE.  Even if the threat seems to have passed and they’re saying, “Oh, it’s ok now, that’s my brother come to take me home,” once you have given them haven on U.S. territory (a Navy ship or an embassy), you can’t make them leave nor let them leave until you are sure they are safe and have authorization from higher authority.  And you certainly don’t encourage them to voluntarily walk off.)

But what did we expect from a State Department that gave the Russians a mis-translated gag gift that said “overcharge” instead of “reset”?  (A gag gift?  In international politics?!?)

Chen devoted his life and sacrificed his safety to document abuses of China’s One Child Policy.  At first, he may have thought he was only bringing to light abuses of the policy (although the policy itself is abusive).  Eventually, it became obvious that the abuses were part and parcel of any coercive, government-mandated birth control program.  And, no, Beijing was not interested in what a self-taught lawyer was telling them about how the policy was being implemented.  Instead of going after officials grossly overstepping the bounds of the law, the government went after Chen, trying him on trumped-up charges and placing him and his family under house arrest.

The U.S. has long made it a policy that we take seriously our responsibilities to support and encourage freedom and democracy and those who fight for them around the world.

Do we love our money so much that we’d rather compromise our principles than offend our lenders?

Fortunately, Chen has supporters in the U.S., too.  This is not the end of his fight to end the One Child Policy, it is a new beginning.

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Small way to speak up

I just saw this on EWTN’s World Over (weekly news show).  Wonder why no women are speaking against the pro-abortion, pro-contraception noise going on lately?  Well, we are and, of course, it isn’t being mentioned.  The “narrative” being pushed is “evil old clerics” vs. “cute, with-it law student”, et. al.

Leaving aside Sandra Fluke’s long-standing and well-documented “reproductive rights” activism (and all questions of how the heck a graduate-level law student has enough time or money to wander around the country giving interviews in her variety of suits and jewelry), the fact is that she (and whoever is bankrolling her faux-outrage tour) does NOT speak for all women.

So, a small way to speak up has been set up: an online petition.  It’s quick and easy, even for those of us too busy with real life, jobs, households, kids, etc. to jet around doing PR spots.

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“Look out, Cecile, here comes the Catholic Church.”

That would be Cecile Richards, the current head of Planned Parenthood.

The speaker is Fr. John Hollowell.  With all the things that cause me worry about the priesthood and its future, people like Fr. Hollowell remind me there is always hope.  His video is worth your time; it is only seven minutes long, the remainder is just his website and letting the song play.  (The song, BTW is Matt Maher’s “Isaiah 61″, which was also used by the diocese of Indianapolis for its March for Life promo video that I talked about a few years back.  I bought it online after hearing it then and play it often.)

And, hey, Cecile?  I’m a woman, so here’s my say: he’s absolutely right!  When I was struggling with infertility, you weren’t there for me.  When I was looking for help with adoption, you weren’t there for me.  When my children’s birth mothers were considering adoption, the most you would’ve given them is an adoption agency’s number out of the phone book and a swift shove out the door, and Planned Parenthood manages to do even that little pitifully rarely.  You convince nearly every pregnant woman walking through your doors to hand over the money and abort their child.

Your local clinic put up a sign declaring, “Planning for parenthood is sacred work.”  Our 40 Days for Life team took one look at it and went out to buy a banner of their own: “Planning to murder children is NOT sacred work.”

You aren’t about planning parenthood, you’re about planning murder.  Everything you do works against life and parenthood.

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7 Quick Takes Friday

1.  The editors of First Things like to quote their late founder, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, on the nature of public life.  “The first thing to be said about public life is that it is not the first thing.”  Hence, the blog languishes while real life at home is crazy.  I told myself when I started that, even if I didn’t write regularly or influence anyone, the blog would not take over my real life because the blogosphere demanded attention.  At least that’s one first intention about blogging that I’ve kept.  So, when I vanish for a bit, please say a prayer for me; something chaotic is probably happening at home.

Which is my excuse for not posting the cute frog-and-lily-pad cookie photo on Leap Day.  So, belated Happy Leap Day!

2.  … and in the real world, these children are obviously in danger of starving to death before the first batch of homemade pizza (yes, I make my own dough, with yeast, it isn’t rocket science!) comes out, but aren’t they cute?

3.  Also, unfortunately, occuring in the real world, is the Obamacare contraception mandate debacle, exacerbated today by the thirteen Catholic senators who voted against the Blunt amendment, which would have provided a permanent conscience clause.  Earlier in the mess, I found this by Michael Ramirez, who is, hands down, my favorite political cartoonist ever.  He just “gets it”.

4.  In the chaos of normal life, I entirely missed posting about the Great Backyard Bird Count.  A small local chain of birding stores promotes it strongly, and, apparently, so do other birding stores in other areas.  We took our “usual birds for your area” checklist and counted birds on two days.  They do this every year on the weekend after Valentine’s Day, you only have to count for fifteen minutes, and you can enter your counts online or by dropping off your checklist where you got it.  This year, they added a really cool searchable map, so you could see where all the checklists were submitted from and what birds were reported and in what numbers.  (We saw an odd duck, so we could see our actual dot when we searched for that species!  The whole thing made for some really fun homeschool science lessons.)

My kids thought this was incredibly fun stuff… my DH asked, “Isn’t birdwatching supposed to be a quiet activity?” as children dashed from window to window shrieking about house finches and mallards and coots.

In a house with four kids?   Um, no, “quiet” and “activity” rarely go together.

5.  It isn’t often that I can say something nice about the Chinese government, but they did get something notable right lately.  For some time, many orphanages have named orphans either “State” or “Party” as their family name, then something to do with their finding place as their given name.  So, not only were orphans starting out without a family in a very family-oriented society, they were labelled for life as orphans, because their names were things like “Federal Street Corner.”  Everyone would immediately know that the person was an orphan because of their odd name.  Although my Chinese-born daughter did not have this (her family name was from the name of the county she was born in), my Chinese-born son’s family name was Guo, “country”.  Continuting a positive trend lately, beginning with reports of re-naming ceremonies in India for girls named “unwanted” and such, the Chinese government has told the orphanages to give the children normal names.  Thank God for little victories.

6.  Our local botanical gardens had a special for February: discounted admission and all-day biking.  Woo hoo!  Coupled with some incredibly warm weather for February, it was a big hit with us.  The two little ones are in the bike trailer (which I’m fairly sure is not rated for their combined weight, since the new guy is denser than lead)… which means I got a great workout, in spite of the gardens being rather flat, because I was hauling an extra seventy or so pounds behind me!

I will have to do a post on the photos from that day; I kept snapping neat shots, thinking, “Hey, I could put this on the blog… if I ever get back to posting regularly…”

 

7.  And finally, a cheery sign of spring.  The photo doesn’t do them justice; they were a gorgeous, deep purple that my little digital camera didn’t quite catch.

As always, many thaks to Jen for hosting 7 Quick Takes Friday, and don’t forget to go check out everyone else’s Friday musings at Conversion Diary!

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Obamacare and Contraception

Just so we’re clear, the Catholic Church is right: contraception is wrong.  It does not reduce abortions; contraception increases abortions.  It does not improve marriages by removing the risk of unwanted children, it destroys marriages.  No, contraception isn’t really contraception all the time: when the Pill fails to prevent ovulation, it prevents implantation of the days-old child by reducing the uterine lining, around 25% of the time.  Which means that women on the Pill, if we assume around a 1/3 chance of pregnancy (conception and successful implantation, the advice given in NFP that ”if you haven’t gotten pregnant in three cycles, something might be wrong”), then women on the Pill, especially younger women, generally more fertile and sexually active, may be averaging an abortion a year.  And when the Obama administration says “contraceptive services”, they include post-sex contraceptives, which are large doses of the usual chemicals, which will either prevent ovulation or abort a just-conceived child.

But the issue isn’t really contraception.

I suppose I should start farther back, with Obamacare itself.  The pro-life movement was up in arms, crying that any government takeover of health care would end in taxpayer-funded abortions and contraception.  “Oh, what a bunch of worrywarts!” scoffed most of the bishops and many members of Congress.  In some cases, anti-Obamacare advocates were maligned as “anti-poor”.  We were assured, “Mandatory abortion or contraceptive coverage?  That’ll never happen!”

Well, your Eminences, welcome to the ”never” your encouragement of Obamacare has created.

While I’m thrilled to hear that every single Catholic bishop in the U.S., along with a good many Protestant leaders, including people who suppported Obama, have issued statements against the contraception mandate, I’m a bit underwhelmed.  Abortion and contraception have been rampant in this country for decades, and the bishops and priests have largely failed to fight them.  It isn’t a moral triumph to finally acknowledge that you ignored people being killed or maimed after they’re dead.  Better late than never, but better on time.

But back to the mandate.  Contrary to our dying local paper, the problem isn’t that there wasn’t an exemption for houses of worship.  Actual churches would be exempt from the mandate, since they employ and serve almost exclusively people of their own faith.  The problem was that absolutely nobody and nothing else would be exempt.

Our local paper condescendingly allowed that if churches insisted on not paying for contraception for the women who worked in the parish office, fine.  However, the editorial went on, when the churches do “secular work” like taking care of migrants, adoption placements, hospitals, schools, etc., then they weren’t really churches anymore, and, thus, had no right to ask that their religious beliefs be respected.  They have to play by the secular laws when they do secular functions, “reasoned” the editors.  (Which takes us back to the Obama administration’s preference for “freedom of worship” instead of “freedom of religion”.  They aren’t the same thing.)

EWTN is suing the federal government, since they don’t qualify for an exemption, but they are adamantly opposed to contraception in general, and paying for it in particular.  Since the Catholic TV network is not directly controlled by an order or a diocese (there were power struggles with the USCCB trying to claim it, so it went private some time ago, although many members of the board are clergy), it wouldn’t even qualify for consideration of an exemption.  So, while they air programs explaining how contraception destroys marriages and is frequently abortifacient (and therefore murder), they would be required to participate in (i.e. pay for) an insurance program that offers free contraception to EWTN’s employees.  In Catholic moral discussions, we describe this as levels of “cooperation with sin”.  Just because you didn’t choose the evil, if you facilitated or encouraged it, you are still somewhat culpable.

I would note that EWTN has hit the nail on the head, when many bishops have missed a bit.  The problem isn’t that Catholic Charities or your local Catholic school (or any of the Protestant organizations or ministries similarly tied to denominations that do not approve of contraception) shouldn’t be forced to pay for something they don’t believe is moral.  Most bishops are clear that those types of organizations should not be forced to violate their moral principles in order to avoid massive, coercive government fines.

The problem is deeper.  I (and you, by the way), as a normal citizen, would be required to buy health insurance from a company that is mandated to provide certain services that I believe to be deeply immoral.  Today, it’s contraception and the early chemical abortifacients.  What comes tomorrow?

If Obamacare and the latest mandate stand, Catholic social services will shut down across the country.  Schools, hospitals, etc.  The Obama administration already yanked a federal grant for human trafficking assistance, because the USCCB (US Council of Catholic Bishops) office wouldn’t provide abortions to the rape and prostitution victims it rescued (never mind their excellent record of service spanning decades).  A number of local Catholic Charities adoption agencies (and, presumably, a number of other, smaller agencies with similar reservations but less publicity) have closed because they refused to call gay “marriage” a legitimate family arrangement and place children for adoption in such families.  The religious agencies are forced to shut down as unprofessional or anti-regulation, and the government increasingly gets to hand out the goodies of social services.

The alternate allegiance to the church that helped you is shifted to the all-powerful government.

All of this goes to emphasize the brilliance of the foundation of both the Constitution and Catholic social teachings.  In Church documents, we call it subsidiarity: the idea that issues should be dealt with at the lowest level possible, for reasons of efficiency, personal relationships, and proper power and responsibility allocation.  The government was never meant to be the all-powerful, omnipresent force in everybody’s lives that it has become.

Archbishop Chaput, as always, clarifies the problem.  It isn’t, he argues, that this mandate was ill-advised in an election year or poorly thought-out:

But it’s clear that such actions are developing into a pattern. Whether it was the administration’s early shift toward the anemic language of “freedom of worship” instead of the more historically grounded and robust concept of “freedom of religion” in key diplomatic discussions; or its troubling effort to regulate religious ministers recently rejected 9-0 by the Supreme Court in the Hosanna Tabor case; or the revocation of the U.S. bishops’ conference human-trafficking grant for refusing to refer rape victims to abortion clinics, it seems obvious that this administration is – to put it generously – tone deaf to people of faith.

I’m guardedly optimistic that the USCCB has decided to reconsider what else they’ve supported when they’ve embraced Democratic politicians for their social programs but ignored their other positions.  If we’re only going to defend the rights of religiously affiliated organizations to have conscience protection, though, we’re missing the point again, and we’ll be discussing the next “surprising” anti-Christian piece of regulation shortly.

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