Cluster of wheat image Grapes and vines image Cluster of wheat image
June 10th, 2011

GENDERS AND BULLIES

A Canadian couple, the Witterick’s, are keeping the sex of their baby, Storm,  secret for the time being.  They don’t want their child programmed by society into being either a boy or a girl.  I presume they will provide the child with both trucks and dolls and dress “it” in unisex clothes.  The idea is to let “it” choose its identity.    We all know this can’t last long.  Sooner or later (certainly by first grade)  the child will be “outed” and “it” will learn that she is a girl or he is a boy.  Because the fact is, she IS a girl, or he IS a boy.  The kids will look at each other and decide, or the teacher will send he/she to the girl’s or  boy’s bathroom.

Human beings come in two genders, male and female. The males have penises and eventually can produce sperm.  The females have uteruses and eventually can produce babies.  The bodily structure, inside and out,  is determined by the genetic make-up.  Normal males inherit an X and Y chromosome while females have two X’s in every single cell of the body.

Abnormalities in the sexual chromosomes occur so seldom (0.2% to 0.02%) that they are rightly described as rare.

A single Y chromosome is sufficient to produce maleness while its absence is necessary for femaleness.  Female abnormalities are due to variations in the number of X chromosomes.  Male abnormalities are the result of irregular numbers of either the X or the Y chromosome or both.

If it is a fact that humans come in two genders, why are elementary school kids in the following video being taught there is a gender spectrum, depending upon how you feel?  In a previous post, I have described how others have come up with anywhere from 6 to 23 genders??

This program in a California public school is ostensibly being done  in an effort to prevent bullying. In my humble opinion, it is really being done in an attempt to normalize sexual perversions.   Of course, bullying should be discouraged.  Instead if multiplying genders, to me it makes much more sense to teach children to treat others as they themselves would like to be treated. There are accidents before birth, and some children are born with defective or missing parts. Ask children how would they want to be treated if they were born that way? There are accidents after birth, and people are broken, burned, handicapped, etc., etc., through no fault of their own. Ask children how would they want to be treated?  Teach children the Golden Rule.   At this age they have no need to confused about their gender and learn about sexual abnormalities.

We do well to celebrate the diversity among human beings. A boy may do needlepoint, ballet dancing, build huge buildings, or fly across the ocean. A girl may do needle point, ballet dancing, build huge buildings, or fly across the ocean.  Intelligence, beauty, abilities, inclinations, choices — these are the things that have a spectrum, not sex.

The sexual life of the clown fish (even Nemo!) is not relevant.  Clown fish lay eggs and all are born males.  The dominant clown fish will replace the female when she dies.  Who cares?  It has nothing to do with human reproduction.  It is introduced into the classroom to make it seems normal for a human being to change from one sex to another.

All of which brings us to the meaning of normal.

In his article on The Meaning of Normal, in the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, C. Daly King writes: The Average may be, and very often is, abnormal.  The normal, on the other hand, is objectively and properly to be defined as that which functions in accordance with its design….Averages from a medical point of view do not define a normal state of health; it is the absence of malfunction which does so…….

Unlike the male clownfish which is able to become a female and lay eggs, no matter how much a boy or girl may want to be the opposite sex, no matter how many male or female hormones they are given, no matter how their external parts are surgically  removed or re-arranged, genetic males will NEVER produce ova, and genetic females will NEVER produce sperm.   On a cellular level, kids born male will always be male and kids born female will always be female.

What we need to teach our children, in the final analysis, is to love one another.  An anti-bullying program should teach respect for all human beings, however odd or different they may be.  We should listen to them, speak truth to them, be patient and kind.  How simple!

~~~

The White House has a special web page, It Gets Better, directed to people who are bullied, especially LGBT folks.

Research reaffirms traditional understanding of gender.

~~~

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. — John 13:34,35

May 17th, 2011

COHABITATION SUCKS

I stole the video. I stole the title. Just wanted to repeat once more the unvarnished truth — cohabitation sucks. It demeans women. It demands contraception, otherwise known as fertility poison. It threatens children with permanent instability, if there be such a thing. How can we have fallen for this scam? SUCKERS!!!

May 9th, 2011

THE BABY THAT WAS

Mother’s Day, and of course I’m musing, as Grandmas do. I’m going back to 1947, I’ve been married three months, and I think I may be pregnant. Well, I knew that could happen if I got married. There was no birth control pill back then and I wouldn’t have used them anyway, because I knew I wanted children “someday.” It seemed “someday” had arrived and we were all right with that. We had figured out how to do the “sex” thing and apparently we were doing the “baby” thing, too. Not bad for amateurs!

I was about two months along when I started to have some slight bleeding which I thought might indicate an imminent miscarriage. What really surprised me was that I started to cry! I had not realized that I was already invested in this baby. I didn’t know that I cared much at that point whether I was pregnant or not. Another thing that also surprised me, after the bleeding stopped and I was still pregnant, was how miffed I was when my plans to go shopping for yarn to make a baby afghan had to be postponed. I wanted to start that afghan NOW – it was going to be made of pink and blue crocheted squares, stitched together, backed with flannel, and bound with satin ribbon. But not next week – NOW! How strongly the nesting instinct had kicked in!

All this musing was prompted by a MercatorNet article, What Price Baby Bliss? which dealt with the desire for babies, “reproductive technology,” and the pain of childlessness. It is an excellent, thought-provoking article but it does not deal with something that comes up especially on Mother’s Day – the pain of having been pregnant but terminating that pregnancy with abortion. It is becoming more and more obvious with the appearance of the Silent No More and Rachel’s Vineyard ministries that abortion wounds a woman in her deepest self.

Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave writes:

As I get ready to celebrate Mother’s Day with my children and grandchildren, I cannot help but think of the hundreds of thousands of women for whom this day is not a time to celebrate the joys of motherhood.

Instead of enjoying their child’s embrace, those women will be thinking about what and who might have been—how their lives would be different. For those women, Mother’s Day may be one of the hardest of the year.

My heart goes out to those women, it breaks for them. Those mothers—because they always will be mothers—had their children ripped away from them, somehow convinced that abortion would “solve the problem.” I hope you will join me in taking just a minute of time on bended knee today to pray for them that they might find comfort in God’s healing power and love.

Once a woman becomes pregnant, very powerful hormones kick in. As a bird starts to build a nest when an egg in on the way, so a woman, without even knowing it, gets ready not only in her body but in her mind, for the coming baby. As the mother bunny lines the nest with fur plucked from her belly, so the woman thinks cradle and baby clothes and pink and blue afghans. Why does Planned Parenthood not want the pregnant woman to see the ultrasound? Because everything in her would rise against hurting this wee son or daughter that is dependent on her and she can’t go through with the abortion.

When it comes to sex, we seem to be actually hardwired. You don’t imagine, do you, that Adam and Eve needed instructions on  how to “be fruitful and multiply?” If you don’t believe in the Adam and Eve stuff, you know that Emmeline and Michael  in the Blue Lagoon discovered how to “make out” and nurse their baby without a “how-to” book.   (Yes, the Blue Lagoon is fiction but you know perfectly well that in real life the same thing would happen, don’t you?) Those hormones and that hardwiring cannot be turned off like a faucet. There is usually grieving for the baby that is miscarried but often everlasting remorse for the baby that is destroyed by “choice.” It goes against everything womanly in a woman.

On this Mother’s Day, I pray for all mothers but especially those with empty aching arms whether by chance or by choice. Lord, help us to appreciate the gift of life and the blessing that is a baby.

December 26th, 2010

SEMINAL THOUGHTS

“Natural” is in!   The pristine forest!  Pure uncontaminated water!    In many ways people believe that “natural” is best.    There is, for example,   a strong movement to return to  “organic” foods.   Also, after years of bottle-feeding for babies, the return to breastfeeding is thriving. I have been writing for fifty years about the reasons why “breast is best” and am heartened to see prime-time commercials by WIC and WHO urging women to nurse their babies for better health. The once strong move toward natural childbirth, however,  seems to be flagging.   A few women are on that bandwagon, having babies with midwives and doulas, but  many more seem to opt for births with injections and medications to relieve pain or strengthen  contractions, and often  even have Cesareans which are not of medical necessity.

On the other hand, who nowadays goes around saying  that natural sex is best?  Hardly anyone.*   Methods of “having sex” abound.  Only one of them can be considered natural.   Sex is only natural when the sperm ends up in a woman’s vagina.    By analogy, eating would not be considered natural if food were placed in  ear or rectum!  The mouth is obviously designed for eating, witness the taste buds,  teeth, tongue, saliva, swallowing mechanism, and tube to the stomach.   Food in inappropriate places only wreaks distress and causes disease.  Likewise, only in heterosexual intercourse can sperm achieve their purpose.    A vagina is marvelously accommodating and lubricated,  resistant to infection,  and heterosexual intercourse provides pleasure as a bonus to both parties!

How can it be imagined that natural sex would result in sperm in a baggie?  How can it be imagined that natural sex can occur when a woman’s hormones are so deranged by contraceptives that she does not ovulate, that she does not emit the “come hither” pheromones of a “natural woman”?   A woman on “the pill”  has been rendered biologically sterile and then wonders why she has no desire, and does not arouse desire in men.  

Years ago Herbert Ratner, MD, wrote about the two fluids that are  produced by human beings which are not for themselves but for “the other.”  The first, obviously, is the milk produced by a woman after she has given birth.  Common sense decrees  that it is for the baby.   Science has demonstrated that it contains many chemicals that foster growth, reduce disease, enhance immunity, and so on,  as well as providing that wonderful skin-to-skin closeness with its psychological benefits.

The second fluid produced for “the other” is the seminal fluid of a man.  No one doubts that those little sperm swimming around with their 23 chromosomes are designed to meet up with an egg, also with 23 chromosomes, to produce a new human, with the proper complement of 46 chromosomes and an entirely different genome.

Less recognized, however, and just recently coming into its own, are the properties of the seminal fluid that carries the sperm.   Does it do anything for “the other” — that is, the woman — besides provide a little lubrication?

Research psychologist Jesse Bering in a September 2010 Scientific American opens his article with the following paragraph:

Dear readers: I have come upon a secret treasure, a heretofore-unknown bounty of facts only recently unearthed by a team of evolutionary psychologists. A vital forewarning, though:  although the data and information I am about to share oozes with the promise of dramatically improving virtually every aspect of your wellbeing, it can also be abused with tragic—even fatal—consequences. This is so much the case, in fact, that I debated the merits of popularizing this material and do so here only with great circumspection and caution. So please be wise in digesting this semen-related knowledge, and be wiser still in applying it to your own sex lives

Bering explains that only 1-5% of the male ejaculate consists of sperm cells. The fluid bearing the sperm is called the seminal plasma.  “In fact, semen has a very complicated chemical profile, containing over 50 different compounds  (including hormones, neurotransmitters, endorphins and immunosuppressants) each with a special function and occurring in different concentrations within the seminal plasma. Perhaps the most striking of these compounds is the bundle of mood-enhancing chemicals in semen. There is good in this goo. Such anxiolytic chemicals include, but are by no means limited to, cortisol (known to increase affection), estrone (which elevates mood), prolactin (a natural antidepressant), oxytocin (also elevates mood), thyrotropin-releasing hormone (another antidepressant), melatonin (a sleep-inducing agent) and even serotonin (perhaps the most well-known antidepressant neurotransmitter).”

It is not surprising in our current culture  that in googling “beneficial effects of semen” we come up with reputed  benefits from ingesting the semen!  However, should the semen go to its intended destination, knowing that the vagina readily absorbs chemicals introduced into it, it is only logical to expect that the above mood-enhancing, anxiolytic, antidepressant results would be experienced by the female partner.  Recent studies have indeed shown that semen has an antidepressant effect on a woman.   Likewise, the female hormones present in the semen (follicle-stimulating hormone – FSH – and luteinizing hormone – LH) are presumed to hasten the ripening and release of eggs from the ovary following intercourse.

As we learn more and more about the constituents of the fluids intended for “the other” it seems a shame to pass up  the benefits they offer. While natural  breastfeeding is now popular,  natural sex is hard to find in our society.  Either the men are condom-clad or the women have their hormones synthetically altered, or both.  We know pheromones are operative in the lower mammals.  A bitch in heat will attract male dogs from miles around.  It is believed that similar come-hither scents are operative in humans — there’s good money in selling colognes laced with pheromones – and it is also known that  female monkeys  cease to be sexually attractive to the males when they are given contraceptive pills.  My post THE PHEROMONE CONNECTION goes into this in more detail.

While sex  without a condom, with a woman  fully  hormonized (and harmonized),  seems ideal, many would protest that natural sex  would result in babies all over the place.   Really?  We have demographers complaining about a birth dearth.   We have nations losing their identity  because the natives are not having children but the Muslim immigrants are.  It is said that France will be a Muslim nation in a decade or two.   Germany cries  “Where have all the children gone!”


Mr. Bering is seriously mistaken if he thinks learning about the benefits of semen is like discovering “a secret treasure.”   As long ago as  the 1980’s the previously mentioned Dr. Herbert Ratner wrote ….

— let us observe that the nursling’s gastrointestinal tract is physiologically, biochemically, and anatomically attuned to the digestion of breast milk, just as the vagina is attuned to coitus and the absorption of semen.  Of immediate interest is the immunosuppressive effect of seminal plasma (the carrier of the sperm).  This plasma contains very powerful prostaglandins, stronger than those to be found in any other biological tissue fluids…..The sturdy, muscular, multi-layered vaginal wall is so constituted that it absorbs the seminal plasma at a slow, modulated rate in order to produce mild immunosuppression sufficient to protect the sperm and embryo from maternal antibodies.

I dare say that Dr. Ratner, believing that humans are designed by a master designer, knew a priori there where would be “good in that goo” as Bering writes, and the science only confirmed it.    

The natural, sensible, healthy alternative to make-believe sex has been slowly gaining ground – NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING.   NFP is as effective as contraceptive pills or condoms with none of the expense, side-effects, or overriding of the woman’s hormonal harmony with synthetic hormones to shut her down and turn her off.   Truly natural sex uses reason and self-discipline instead of artificial drugs and rubbers which make a mockery of the whole encounter.

Someone named Michael G.  posted this comment on someone else’s blog.  It says so well what I want to get across.

When we try to do life our own way, according to our own instruction manual, we get so frustrated, because we aren’t being used for the purpose for which we were designed. It’s like using a paintbrush to change a diaper, or a hammer to eat dinner. When something is serving its designer’s intent, effectiveness, impact, peace, and fulfillment are plentiful.

*Here I must add a plug for Patrick Coffin’s recent book, Sex Au Naturel, which is so well recommended by such well-qualified persons that I do not hesitate to second the recommendation.   I was sorely tempted to use that title for this blog post because it says exactly what the whole thing is about.  In due time I shall read Sex Au Naturel and there shall follow a post with that title.



November 9th, 2009

MUCUS and MOTHER TERESA

I’m 86, I just got back from a Natural Family Planning course, and here I am, all excited all over again! I am, perhaps, not in the usual NFP demographic, but I never cease to be amazed at the wonders of the human body and I’ve been writing about the efficacy of NFP for years now.

I am also totally amazed that supposedly intelligent people, all green and natural, with their filtered water, their organic veggies, and their free ranging chickens, are willing to pollute their one and only body rather than – God forbid – abstain from sex every now and then. There is just no end to the variety of non-biological carcinogenic steroids that they are willing to ingest, insert, or apply as rings, things, pills and patches, rather than learn to understand their bodies and behave rationally.

Quite conveniently I have come across an old article of mine with a September, 1993, quote from the British Medical Journal authored by Dr. R.E.J. Ryder, Department of Endocrinology, Dudley Road Hospital in Birmingham, England. In it Dr. Ryder says that the Catholic church offers and approves a method of birth control which is “cheap, effective, without side-effects…and may be the family planning method of choice for the Third World.”   His article provoked “unprecedented debate” in Great Britain and there was “enormous resistance” to its publication.

Dr. Ryder repeated the well-known facts that a woman’s egg has a lifespan of about 24 hours and is fertilizable for only part of that time. The sperm, however, may remain viable from four to seven days. “Thus a woman is potentially fertile for no more than six to eight days of her cycle, probably less in most cases.” Hormonal studies as well as ultrasound studies have confirmed that the clinical observations of changes in cervical mucus and body temperature as taught in Natural Family Planning can accurately identify the time of ovulation. He cited a World Health Organization study of 869 women of proven fertility in five centers (Auckland, Bangalore, Dublin, Manila, and San Miguel, El Salvador) showing that regardless of culture and education 93% of the women —  even those who were illiterate — could recognize the mucus symptoms. “The probability of conception from intercourse outside the period of fertility defined by cervical mucus observation was 0.0004.”

Another study of 19,843 poor women of Calcutta found a failure rate for Natural Family Planning similar to that of the combined contraceptive pill (less than 2%). In closing his article Dr. Ryder wrote: “There is no doubt that it would be more efficient for the ongoing world debate on overpopulation, resources, environment, poverty and health to be conducted against a background of truth rather than fallacy. It is therefore important that the misconception that Catholicism is synonymous with ineffective birth control is laid to rest.”

One has only to Google any contraceptive medication to learn about their myriad complications and side-effects and realize they are all harmful to normal female functioning. (Dr. Herbert Ratner has called it chemical warfare against women!) A woman on the Pill can be a paying customer for 30 years.   Doctor, pharmacist, and drug company all profit all that time. Unfortunately, nature has no lobby.

I went to this NFP meeting because I had heard that nowadays the NFP people have a new “one rule” which makes it easier to determine a woman’s fertile and infertile periods. Yes, there are still charts to keep (at least until you are well acquainted with how your particular body functions), temperatures to take, and mucus and cervical signs to record. The new rule is more about looking at the whole picture rather than any particular bodily indicator. For particulars, two resource sites might be helpful.

I was particularly intrigued by the wonders of cervical mucus. Who would have known? It turns out that there are various kinds of cervical mucus at various times during a woman’s cycle, some dense and unwelcoming, but there is a “slippery and stretchy mucus,” resembling raw egg white, in which the sperm can live for 2 to 3 days while waiting for a fertilized egg to arrive. Microscopically, it forms string-like channels and provides transport (‘swimming lanes’) for sperm cells. It produces a “wet, lubricative sensation at the vulva.”

I have read that the Missionaries of Charity (Mother Teresa’s order) have been able to teach effective natural birth control in India relying primarily on the mucus factor. As I recall, the instruction went something like this: Moisture makes babies grow; dryness prevents growth. (I don’t remember the exact words, but you get the idea.)  There has been  no more ardent advocate for natural family planning than Mother Teresa.

Who would think I would one  day write a blog post on the marvels of mucus?  Swimming channels for sperm in women’s cervical mucus!  How much more accommodating could we get?

Surely, we are fearfully and wonderfully made!

~~~

One of the most demanding things for me is travelling everywhere – and with publicity. I have said to Jesus that if I don’t go to heaven for anything else, I will be going to heaven for all the travelling with all the publicity, because it has purified me and sacrificed me and made me really ready to go to heaven. – Mother Teresa

July 19th, 2009

A DIVINE DESIGN

Our U. S. bishops have proclaimed July 19-26 as Natural Family Planning Awareness Week.  They publish  a poster and make available educational  materials that the various parishes can use but promoting Natural Family Planning is left up to each diocese.  The week is meant to highlight the anniversary of the publication of Humanae Vitae and the feast days of Saints Anne and Joachim. Happily it also coincides with the publication of Benedict XVI’s new encyclical, the very beautiful  Caritas in Veritate (Love in Truth).

09_poster_5002

NFP — A DIVINE DESIGN

The varieties of contraceptive medications are multiplying so quickly that it is hard to keep track of them – pills (choose monthly periods or every-four-months), patches, implants, inserts et al.   All  of them come with warnings about side-effects, both in the package inserts and the TV commercials. In the face of all this hype, I feel that Natural Family Planning (NFP) needs an advocate. The old “rhythm” method, which was used primarily by Catholics, was sometimes referred to as Vatican Roulette because it often resulted in pregnancy due to the variations in cycles among women.

Many people are unaware that “rhythm” has now been replaced by Natural Family Planning which has an effectiveness of over 95%, equaling that of “the pill” and without the expense or the side-effects. NFP, which involves cooperation between man and wife, awareness of the cyclical changes in the woman’s body, and a measure of self-control, has been steadily gaining in popularity among various groups.

The first of these groups might be referred to as the “ecological” group. These folks want to preserve the integrity of their bodies, and would not want to pollute the human body any more than they would pollute the environment. They delight in a fully functional body and do not choose to interfere with normal function. They think it inconsistent to say “Avoid drugs” on the one hand, and on the other hand to say “Take this drug so you won’t get pregnant.” They do not think it is true that self-control is possible in the areas of drugs, food, and alcohol, but impossible in the realm of sex.

A second group, not entirely distinct, consists of those who are aware of the effect of oral contraceptives (OCs) on a woman’s body. They have either experienced the unpleasant side-effects of “the pill” themselves or know someone who has. Or they may have read the warnings in the Physician’s Desk Reference or in the package inserts. They wonder why the responsibility and physical consequences of birth control should be borne by the woman alone. The woman who takes OCs daily bathes every cell in her body with powerful hormones which may lead to problems in multiple areas. It has certainly been a boon to the manufacturers (700 billion dollars a year) to have millions of women taking their pills daily but it is hardly a boon to womankind.  After years of abusing her body by medicating it when there was nothing wrong with it, can a woman really expect that body to immediately snap back and produce a baby on demand?   Some are lucky; many are not.   Some doctors are talking about a current ‘epidemic’ of infertility.


A third group consists of those who for religious reasons consider artificial birth control wrong because it interferes with the design of God. Contraceptive pills and appliances are seen as means of trying to outsmart God by sabotaging his handiwork. The Catholic Church has emphatically spoken out against artificial birth control. However, with growing awareness that the new OCs do not prevent ovulation as effectively as the previous, stronger, more hazardous pills, but rather render the uterine lining inhospitable so that the developing embryo dies, many non-Catholics are looking for an alternative to the “pill.” In essence, the “pill” can cause a very early abortion.

Looking into Protestant history it is found that John Calvin, John Wesley, and Martin Luther all spoke out against birth control. In his book, The Bible and Birth Control, Charles Provan, a Protestant, states “there is no doubt about it; the contraception laws of the 19th century were passed by Protestants for a largely Protestant America…no Christian church ever accepted contraception as morally permissible before 1930.”

How, then, does Natural Family Planning work? It is possible by observing the changes in a woman’s body, in her cervical mucus, and in her body temperature to accurately determine the one day in her cycle that she ovulates. By avoiding sexual intimacy for several days surrounding ovulation a couple can also avoid the hazards, the expense, and in many cases the guilt of artificial contraception. Couples report that they have better communication and that the brief period of abstinence is the best aphrodisiac! In No-Pill No-Risk Birth Control by Nona Aguilar a husband reports: “I wasn’t enthusiastic when we changed to NFP, but we saw no other way. We went to class very, very reluctantly. Almost right away it started happening again: that incredible yearning I used to feel for my wife returned–and not just once in a while. It was there every month. Every cycle gradually turned into courtship and honeymoon all over again.” A wife says, “Our last baby was conceived out of love, with full knowledge that we would conceive. From that moment on we could picture the hours and days of growth. But before NFP I feared going to bed, as I didn’t know my fertility cycle and worried that I might become pregnant. Now I know my fertility signs and feel 100 percent confident in those signs and no longer fear. It is a great relief and a burden off my shoulders. I want more children — but when I am ready and capable.”

Natural Family Planning is not something that is taught in any depth in medical schools but there is a Natural Family Planning Medical Consultant Program offered for physicians at the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction, in Omaha NE. Information on NFP is available there. You can teach yourself much about the practice of NFP by using the online manual, Natural Family Planning: The Question-Answer Book by John and Sheila Kippley. This online manual is short, easy-to-read, and free.

Man is the only animal that mates year-round. Other animals mate by instinct and only for a season. We have the option of using our reason and our will to choose our season, to achieve pregnancy or no pregnancy, which is the only true reproductive freedom. And we can have this without polluting our bodies, without exchanging normal bodily function for years of abnormal function!

~~~


There is a season for everything, a time for every occupation under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die…a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. — Ecclesiastes 3:l,5.

Intelligence and love are not in separate compartments: love is rich in intelligence and intelligence is full of love. — Benedict XVI, Love in Truth.




January 12th, 2009

HUNGRY FOR LOVE

Last night I feel asleep listening to Father Groeschel talking to Fr. Felix Ilesanmi Osasona, MSP, about how the church in Africa is growing by leaps and bounds.  The previous night had been relatively sleepless and the day difficult, with five inches of snow to cope with.  I slept well last night, even with EWTN blasting the whole time.  I woke up to find, at 6 AM, Mary Beth Bonacci telling me about love.   What a blessing!  I wish I could just insert a wee video of that half-hour for readers that aren’t  able to  watch EWTN regularly at 6 AM.

Mary Beth was telling me that our children are hungry for love (as is everyone) but we have to teach them about love.  We have to model love for them, explain to them what love is (early, before the hormones kick in).  Tell them about real love.   Real love is when you want what is best for someone, when you care about them and their problems, when you are willing to sacrifice for them.  Love is a decision, not a feeling.

Mary Beth says she is known as the “pizza love” lady .  She compares real love with pizza love.  When you love pizza you like what pizza does for you, you hunger for its taste, you’ll go out of  your way to get some.  But when you’ve had your fill of pizza, you toss it aside.  You don’t care that it’s sitting in the refrigerator getting green and moldy, once your appetite is satisfied.  It’s all about you.

Loving means I’m for you.  Using means you’re for me.  “Pizza love” is about what you do for me, to me.  Mary Beth suggests starting early with the “pizza love” analogy to get kids thinking about the meaning of love.  Model unconditional love for them.    She says her Dad told her, “We’ll always love you, no matter what.”  She says he never actually  said it but she understood that meant he would still love her no matter how she screwed up, if she came home pregnant, or whatever.

[In the background, as I type, Mother Angelica is leading the rosary.  It’s a nice kind of background “music.”]

Mary Beth says God is “flipped out, madly, crazy in love with your child.”  And with every other person.  God only wants what is best for them.  It’s draining to raise a kid.  We need to turn to God for the power to love our children well.  We can’t do it on our own.  Love is a theological virtue – it’s God’s power working in us.  We need to pray to be able to love well and we need to teach our children to pray early on.

Well, maybe I’m through channeling Mary Beth Bonacci.   It was a superb half-hour, followed by Crossing the Goal with real men teaching about the Lord’s prayer.  Today it focuses on the line, “Deliver us from evil.”  I will not synopsize that program, but well worth watching.

EWTN will show the March for Life in Washington DC on January 22, LIVE!   I’ve been there and have seen personally the masses of people, marching curb to curb on Constitutional Avenue, as far as the eye could see, thousands and thousands of them.  Where else will you ever get this kind of coverage?  Not in your secular press.  Not on mainline TV.

I am so grateful to be able to receive EWTN.  I had nothing to do with it – it’s that little satellite dish that my son put up there that brings in EWTN while my  neighbors on cable can’t receive it.  Thank you, Dan.

The message of Father Groeschel last night was that the United States is now a mission country! We used to send missionaries to so-called  “third world countries.”  Those countries — Asian, African — are now sending missionaries to the United States to relieve our priest shortage and
minister to our spiritual hunger.   (See Missionary Society of St. Paul)

Song (John 13:34)

Love one another, love one another
As I have loved you.
And care for each other, care for each other
As I have cared for you.
And bear one another’s burdens –
Share one another’s joys –
And love one another, love one another
And bring each other home.

~~~

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.  —  Mother Teresa

Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.  — Gandhi

October 10th, 2008

BAD MEMORIES

“The name escapes me at the moment,” said Father Benedict Groeschel on his Sunday evening program. “Don’t get old.”

Having the name of a person or place escape you is not peculiar to old folks, but it does seem to happen more often the older we get.  Now, Father Groeschel is ten years younger than I am and his memory is astonishingly good, one might even say miraculously good, considering his terrible accident and lengthy coma just a few years ago.  But, as with Father Groeschel, more and more often in my peer group I notice that we grope for a word that just doesn’t appear at the tip of the tongue when we want it.   With myself, it most often seems to be a person’s name.  I can remember the person’s occupation, where s/he lives, the nationality of the name, how many syllables it has, sometimes the letter it begins with – if you say it, I’ll recognize it right off.  Like Father Groeschel, I just murmur, “It will come to me later.”  We oldsters are patient with each other and hope that while this incapacity is annoying it is par for the course.  We add, half-joking, that we’re “Up to Z in Alzheimer’s!” Read the rest of this entry »

October 8th, 2008

YOU CAN BREAST-FEED YOUR BABY

When this article as published way back in 1955, breast-feeding was a lost art.  Most babies were bottle-fed and I knew of no woman  who nursed her baby.   Breastfeeding was at that time counter-cultural.  The first La Leche League group was formed in l958 and their The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding was written to fill a very real need.   Is is not amazing that a normal, natural, motherly action could be so supplanted by a contrived, bothersome, inferior method of baby feeding?   It makes one wonder about the common sense of womankind.

The swing is back to normal mothering but individual mothers still need encouragement to persevere, especially when they know there is a workable alternative if they run into problems.   If you, like me, have no friend, relative, or mother to cheer you on, I think the following should be helpful. Reading it over some fifty years later, there are some sentences that I might want to tweak a bit, but human nature and human physiology do not change significantly in a mere half-century. Much is written nowadays about the importance of finding time for one-on-one relationships. Much is said about the need for busy mothers to find a little time to relax so that they don’t get so overwhelmed.  Just settle down, with a baby at the breast, and  let the oxytocin flow — it’s like a little oasis!

YOU CAN NURSE YOUR BABY

I once heard of a woman who filled up so much after her baby was born that she couldn’t buy a bra big enough to fit her.  But she couldn’t nurse her baby.   She had “that blue milk, you know.”  And every time I think of her I grieve a little for the baby that would have thrived on that abundance of blue milk — for it cannot be disputed that human milk is the best baby food.  True, it is bluer than cow’s milk — and for good reason.  It has less protein, less fat, and more sugar than cow’s milk.  Its composition is different because it is intended for a baby, not a calf.  By the time cow’s milk is properly doctored up with a formula (water and some form of sugar are added to cow’s milk for no other reason than to make it more like breast milk) it, too, has a bluish-white color. Read the rest of this entry »

June 21st, 2008

CHEMICAL WARFARE AGAINST WOMEN

Women are complaining of a “shocking gender inequity” because some insurance companies that will cover Viagra for men will not cover birth control pills for women. After all, they say, thirty years of buying The Pill will cost a women close to $5000. According to the ACLU, women of reproductive age pay 68% more than men in out-of-pocket health care costs.

The men have something broken that they want fixed. The women, on the other hand, have something fixed that they want broken. They want their fertility destroyed. The men want a medicine. The women want a drug that does nothing at all to promote wellness and has many harmful effects. Women who would not consider polluting the environment are willing to pollute the “ecosystem” of their own bodies in such as fashion that every cell of every organ is affected. With good reason Dr. Herbert Ratner has called birth control pills “chemical warfare against women.” Obviously he has a different perspective than the women clamoring for The Pill. Why? Read the rest of this entry »