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Archbishop of New Orleans criticizes ‘blatantly anti-life’ sterilization proposal

Louisiana’s Rep. John LaBruzzo, a Republican from Metairie, last week said he is studying a plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied.

His proposal would also cover other forms of birth control, such as vasectomies for men, and could also encourage tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income people to have more children, the Times-Picayune reports.

Speaking of demographic trends, LaBruzzo said: “We're on a train headed to the future and there's a bridge out… And nobody wants to talk about it.”

LaBruzzo said he is concerned that people receiving government aid such as food stamps and subsidized housing are reproducing at a faster rate than the more affluent, better-educated people who presumably pay more taxes to the government.

I don't even want to comment. This acceptable disdain for the poor that is starting to enter everyday language is scary.

HT:Curt Jester

Both major U.S. political parties have good people in their ranks. Neither party fully represents a Catholic way of thinking about social issues. One of the lessons we need to learn from the last fifty years is that a preferred American "Catholic" party doesn't exist. The sooner Catholics feel at home in any political party, the sooner that party begins to take them for granted and then to ignore their concerns. Party loyalty is a dead end. It is a lethal form of laziness. Issues matter. Character matters. Acting on principal matters. The sound bite and the slogan do not matter. They belong to a vocabulary of the herd and human beings deserve better.

~Archbishop Chaput in Render Unto Caesar

I hate when books start giving you good quotes in like the first three pages.

On the 4th of July, I was at a get together at a girlfriend's house along with some of her extended family. I was having a conversation with her where we were talking about one of our recent fun adventures of the flu going through the house, and our jobs as mothers to clean up, diagnose, feed and care for people despite having the flu ourselves. Her brother with motives I will never understand, randomly made the comment in passing "Oh, you're friggin' hypochondriac, Man!" It was an odd remark as it was out of place as there was nothing to the conversation that was out of the ordinary. She was shaken by this remark. Like me, she has family members that actually are hypochondriacs, and many of us who have been affected by this behavior tend to underplay when we are sick so as not to be perceived as a hypochondriac.

Unfortunately this in and of itself is not healthy either as people tend to ignore simple health problems like a persistent cold and cough until it turns into full blown pneumonia, as was the case with my girlfriend. I have a feeling she was hoping her family would note the contrast between her and her hypochondriac family member, but in turn they just ended up rolling their eyes for making mountains out of molehills and being hospitalized for pneumonia. So when her brother made this remark she stopped short and told him she has always striven, albeit perhaps not in the most healthy manner, to not be that type of person and it hurt her deeply to hear that remark because of it. Her brother's reaction was simply to wave his hand in the air and say "Oh, lighten up already! You can't take a joke." End of discussion.

I was there and I have seen this over and over again. People saying something really stupid with the original intent to injure. The remarks are usually an attack on character as opposed just simply remembering something that could be construed as funny. It is never "oh gosh, I remember that time we went to the movies and spilled the popcorn, and while you tried to pick up the popcorn, your kid spilled the soda-it seemed like you couldn't cut a break that day!" It is more along the lines of "You're such a klutz!" When the person they are referring to does not simply lie down and be insulted, they take no responsibility by saying "oh that was a joke, such and such needs to lighten up and be able to laugh at themselves."

It is so common that I wonder why it is not common bad etiquette like telling your host they are a horrible cook or racial slurs. But then again, I noticed that people who subscribe to this kind of behavior have no respect for personal boundaries anyway.

Last week I was happy to see someone else had addressed this behavior before, none other than C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters:

The real use of Jokes or Humour in in quite a different direction, and it is sepcially promised among the English who take their 'sense of humour' so seriously that deficiency in this sense is almost the only deficiency at which they feel shame. Humour is for them the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply let's other pay for him, he is 'mean'; if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer 'mean' but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humorous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful-unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man's damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke. And this temptation can almost be entirely hidden from your patient by that English seriousness about Humour. Any suggestion that there might be too much of it can be represented to him as 'Puritanical' or as betraying a 'lack of humour'.

"Coincidences are spiritual puns."

-- G.K. Chesterton

(via the Ironic Catholic)

It is worth noting, by the way, that the most sentimental people, who are loudest against the right to wage a just war, to execute a criminal, are just the people who are most likely to be in favour of ‘putting incurables out of their pain,’ which the commandment against murder most emphatically forbids.--Hilaire Belloc, via "The Daily Eudemon", via TSO

"You can be very caring and still be extremely dangerous." -- S., one of my instructors in nursing school

Anthony Esolen on sentimentality

Regina Doman has an entry up about cake stands. I love cakes. I love baking them, I love eating them, and I love displaying them on the cake stand I inherited from my grandmother. And just reading that short entry about cake stands makes me want to drop what I'm doing and make a white cake with lemon filling and coconut seven-minute frosting. And when it was done, I would put it on my cake stand, take a picture, brew some coffee, get out the china, and yummmm.

Regina also mentions that Victoria magazine is coming back this fall. Sweet articles about gracious living, recipes, and lots and lots and lots of pretty pictures. It helped me keep my sanity while I was in school, and I still have my clip file of some of my favorite articles (including the one that introduced me to commonplace books) and pictures. It ceased publication in 2003 and I've missed it, so I'm really happy to see that it's coming back again.

From Mark Stricherz's comments on the Virginia Tech horror:

"Libertarianism offers nothing to those who suffer from severe mental illness. It is the political philosophy of entrepreneurs, sexual liberationists, artists, and the wealthy."

via Kathy Shaidle, this reflection by "Laura":

There are traditional laws, traditional customs, traditional manners. But, it’s the traditions of the heart that hound me. Perhaps I hear too much the naggings of the dead and the complaints of the not-yet-born. The dead, they do always whisper in my ear. Really, sometimes they talk about the pettiest of things. “Why don’t you have the wreath on the door? Where are the candles for the table? You think we were shallow and stupid?!” But, most of all they whine on and on about the traditions of the heart and the evaporation of love, between men and women and between parents and children. Oh, and the not-yet-born—Hah! They clamor in their cradles as if I were their mother! The most grating accusations of neglect so that I want to cover up my ears and say, “It’s not fair. I am not your mother. I want to live my own life!”

The not-yet-born are simply future generations, so intimately connected with me, you, everyone. It’s not possible to be a traditionalist if you think of yourself as part of a community that includes only the living. I think of myself as part of community—a living, breathing community—that extends far back in time and far into the distant future. But, I use the term “think of myself” loosely because it’s not simply an intellectual thing. I have no choice in the matter and have not arrived here simply by logic. I feel the complaints of the not-yet-born. Perhaps it’s simply maternal projection, but I sympathize, I know they will judge us, I know they will be angry that they must work so hard to resurrect what we let fall. Besides, I love them. After all, they are the children of my children and the children of these. They are the descendents of my sisters and brother, my cousins and friends. They are mine. Only someone with a shriveled heart wouldn’t care.

I know they will judge us.

And really, isn't being mindful of generations present and future the ultimate in being inclusive?

The Second Inaugural Address:

Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether"....

The entire speech is in the Extended Entry.

Print, read, annotate, and heed:

Pray without Ceasing: A Daily Plan of Attackhttp://www.lumengentleman.com

This is a really interesting article.

Modern specialists in the science of heraldry suspect, however, that this blazon (coat of arms) of the blackamoor is instead the very opposite of a negative symbol. In the last decade or two it has been pointed out that the moor's head quite possibly could have referred to St. Maurice, the black patron saint of the Holy Roman Empire from the beginning of the 10th century.

Because of his name and native land, St. Maurice had been portrayed as black ever since the 12th century. The insignia of the black head, in a great many instances, was probably meant to represent this soldier saint since a majority of the arms awarded were knightly or military. With 6,666 of his African compatriots, St. Maurice had chosen martyrdom rather than deny his allegiance to his Lord and Saviour, thereby creating for the Christian world an image of the Church Militant that was as impressive numerically as it was colourwise.

Here, no doubt, is a major reason why St. Maurice would become the champion of the old Roman church and an opposition symbol to the growing influence of Luther and Calvin. The fact that he was of the same race as the Ethiopian baptized by St. Philip in Acts of the Apostles was undoubtedly an important element to his significance as well. Since this figure from the New Testament was read as a personification of the Gentile world in its entirety, the complexion of St. Maurice and his Theban Legion (the number of which signified an infinite contingent) was also understood as a representation of the Church's universality - a dogmatic ideal no longer tolerated by the Reformation's nationalism. Furthermore, it cannot be coincidental that the most powerful of the German princes to remain within the Catholic fold, the archbishop Albrecht von Brandenburg, not only dedicated practically all the major institutions under his jurisdiction to St. Maurice but in what is today one of the most important paintings of the Renaissance, had himself portrayed in Sacred Conversation with him....

...it is likely that St. Maurice and his Theban Legion became associated with Prester John as the ideal soldiers for the ideal state. It should be pointed out, furthermore, that, heraldically, since he was the only monarch who could claim the 'Sang Real' or the 'Royal Blood' of Christ because of his descent from Solomon, Prester John was the only individual deemed worthy of the right to bear as arms the image of the Crucifix. Even the earring traditionally worn by the blackamoor is a reference to this sacred privilege.

I believe a little of this came up after the election of Pope Benedict XVI.

via commenter CV at Mark Shea's:

Celling Out: Bioethics and the Culture of Cool

Excerpt (emphasis added)

A buddy of mine from college, one of the few with whom I still maintain regular contact, is convinced that I misplaced my brain somewhere over the course of the last eleven years... I'm religious—a Christian, to be more precise—which automatically makes my perspectives questionable as far as my agnostic friend is concerned. Exacerbating matters is the extent to which my views place me squarely within a "conservative" political framework and thus, in my friend's estimation, a position of ignorance, bigotry, and superstition.... Fortunately for my ego, I eventually came to realize that such intransigence really has very little to do with me personally; rather, it's part of a much larger phenomenon with which those of us attempting to safeguard human life must learn to deal. To state the matter as simply as possible, what I have discovered about my friend is that when it comes to bioethical issues, he's much more concerned with the associations of particular beliefs than the beliefs themselves. For him, embryonic stem-cell research is justifiable—even perhaps praiseworthy—not because logic has led him to this conclusion but in order to align himself with one particular cultural community over and against another. In short, my friend—a devotee of The Daily Show and NPR, a subscriber to The New Yorker, Adbusters, and The Financial Times, and a pretty big fan of both Al Franken and Michael Moore—wants to be thought of as an urbane and intelligent person and so has chosen for himself the political opinions that he believes further this reputation.

YES. For too many people, logic has nothing to do with it. They live in Maureen Dowd's world, a world where grown-up people still live by the rules of the middle-school cafeteria: I think this way because the cool kids think this way.

via Realpsed Catholic: Regeneration:

Of all the damnations I have heaped upon what I call “postmodernism” lately, the one that seems most to surprise my readers is “joylessness”. To be clear, let me begin by explaining what I mean by “postmodern men” (or, “posthuman moderns” as I call them, when my mood is fraying). I mean, the sort of person we see everywhere around us, raised from the 1950s forward, in environments from which all the certainties and decencies of Western civilization had been progressively vacuumed, so that even such concepts as “mom and apple pie” may now be received as alien and controversial....

I think art, broadly, offers many alternative means to the kind of regeneration -- moral, and ethical, as well as aesthetic -- that can help us out of our enclosed spaces. Learning to draw, from nature; to sing, in key; to dance, in pattern; to write, metrically; even to sew, or to master carpenter’s joints -- all such enterprises offer the lost soul an individual direction out of the jungle.

The reason why, is that each is a discipline that restores us to harmony with the natural order of things. Each offers a way of seeing into God’s creation, and puts us in the presence of what is infinitely greater than ourselves.

To be able to draw a single flower, with full attention to all its colours and parts, is to be lifted out of one’s tawdry self into a realm where good, truth, and beauty still prevail. It is to recover joy.

Kathy Shaidle posts this:

"In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die."

--Dorothy Sayers