Men and women are different? I never would have guessed!
The Today Show this morning seemed very proud of what they considered to be a groundbreaking discovery: Research shows gender affects how our brains work.
I think anyone who considers this a major discovery would be blown away by Theology of the Body. Do they think the only difference between men and women is body parts? Seeing articles like this gives me a new perspective on the importance of the Pope John Paul's work. I guess I take for granted that I recognize the "language of the body" and that men and women are different to their very cores.
To me it is easy to see how lacking this understanding could lead to many errors about what someone believes about the human person and especially sexuality. Maybe this "groundbreaking discovery" can open some eyes that never would have been opened otherwise. Hey, we can always hope and pray for that anyway right?
Showing posts with label Theology of the Body. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theology of the Body. Show all posts
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Monday, October 09, 2006
Big Family Haters - my #1 Pet Peeve
I was reading this article from the AP on the small increase in the US in larger families. 11 percent of births in 2004 were to women who already had 3 children, up from 10 percent the year before. That's hardly a world-changing event, but I like the direction of the change. The article is pretty balanced as well, even gets a plug in about a Roman Catholic family that refused to have birth control and wanted to have a big family. They totally miss the boat, however, on people who plan and try to have large families - like my wife and I and many of our friends from Steubenville are already putting into practice.
This article mentioned one of the things that makes me absolutely crazy about people in our world today - summarized by "the gasp," "the stare," and "the head shake." It's those middle-aged femi-crazies who stalk supermarket aisles waiting for innocent, unsuspecting women under 35 who have the unmitigated gaul to love their God, love their husband, and believe in the goodness of life enough to manifest if by having more than three children. These goulish keepers of infertility, jealousy, and the culture of death sneer, lift up their noses, and scoff at the obvious ignorance of those who clearly don't realize that pregnacy is just another way for men to enslave women and that children are a curse to the planet that will steal all its precious resources that need to be saved for baby pandas. And that's if they don't come over and tell you just how "irresponsible" you're being.
These people, honestly, make me just want to punch a hole in the wall. The absolute arrogance, the smug confidence in something so antithetical to the very essence of humanity and truth! It's insane! And they stand there like it's the most natural thing in the world to hate children, to think that the future is hopeless, and to have three condos, two cars, four dogs, and not a single person to truely pass on the goodness you've received from God. It makes me so irrationally angry I can hardly stand it. The only time I ever encountered one of these people I had to leave the store I was so angry I was actually bristling with fury. If any of these people try to say something like that to my wife...well, let's just hope for everyone's sake that doesn't happen.
I don't like sounding like Ann Coulter. The fact that this class of people evokes a reaction in me as close to hate as anything I am aware of in myself is not a good thing. Righteous anger is virtuous, but is a path that must be trodden upon with wisdom. Christ drove the money-collectors from the temple, and you better believe if one of these snippering snobs approached my wife or family with their gospel of lies, the "driving out" process would be vigorous indeed. We are not called to "tolerate" darkness, but to dispell it with the light of truth. Love the sinner, hate the sin.
Clearly, I hold nothing against those who don't have kids or those married persons who choose, for legitmate reasons, to not have a large family, or anyone who is actually infertile. I'm against those who have choosen the road of death and despair and are actually surprised when people don't want to follow them down it.
I was reading this article from the AP on the small increase in the US in larger families. 11 percent of births in 2004 were to women who already had 3 children, up from 10 percent the year before. That's hardly a world-changing event, but I like the direction of the change. The article is pretty balanced as well, even gets a plug in about a Roman Catholic family that refused to have birth control and wanted to have a big family. They totally miss the boat, however, on people who plan and try to have large families - like my wife and I and many of our friends from Steubenville are already putting into practice.
This article mentioned one of the things that makes me absolutely crazy about people in our world today - summarized by "the gasp," "the stare," and "the head shake." It's those middle-aged femi-crazies who stalk supermarket aisles waiting for innocent, unsuspecting women under 35 who have the unmitigated gaul to love their God, love their husband, and believe in the goodness of life enough to manifest if by having more than three children. These goulish keepers of infertility, jealousy, and the culture of death sneer, lift up their noses, and scoff at the obvious ignorance of those who clearly don't realize that pregnacy is just another way for men to enslave women and that children are a curse to the planet that will steal all its precious resources that need to be saved for baby pandas. And that's if they don't come over and tell you just how "irresponsible" you're being.
These people, honestly, make me just want to punch a hole in the wall. The absolute arrogance, the smug confidence in something so antithetical to the very essence of humanity and truth! It's insane! And they stand there like it's the most natural thing in the world to hate children, to think that the future is hopeless, and to have three condos, two cars, four dogs, and not a single person to truely pass on the goodness you've received from God. It makes me so irrationally angry I can hardly stand it. The only time I ever encountered one of these people I had to leave the store I was so angry I was actually bristling with fury. If any of these people try to say something like that to my wife...well, let's just hope for everyone's sake that doesn't happen.
I don't like sounding like Ann Coulter. The fact that this class of people evokes a reaction in me as close to hate as anything I am aware of in myself is not a good thing. Righteous anger is virtuous, but is a path that must be trodden upon with wisdom. Christ drove the money-collectors from the temple, and you better believe if one of these snippering snobs approached my wife or family with their gospel of lies, the "driving out" process would be vigorous indeed. We are not called to "tolerate" darkness, but to dispell it with the light of truth. Love the sinner, hate the sin.
Clearly, I hold nothing against those who don't have kids or those married persons who choose, for legitmate reasons, to not have a large family, or anyone who is actually infertile. I'm against those who have choosen the road of death and despair and are actually surprised when people don't want to follow them down it.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Viva la Parenthood Revolution!
ZENIT included this article in its weekly wrap-up. It discusses the deline of mother/father families. I would have liked to link to the article, but ZENIT articles do not have their own permalinks, so here it is:
Decline of Mom-and-Pop Families
Kids Left Behind as Parenthood Is Redefined
NEW YORK, SEPT. 30, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Family structures and parenthood roles are being redefined without sufficient consideration for the needs of children. This is the warning of a report just published that describes worldwide trends in family law and reproductive technology.
"The Revolution in Parenthood: The Emerging Global Clash Between Adult Rights and Children's Needs" is published by the Commission on Parenthood's Future. The commission "is an independent, nonpartisan group of scholars and leaders," active in the area of the family, according to a press release on the Web site of the Institute for American Values. The New York-based institute is one of the organizations behind the commission.
The author of the report is Elizabeth Marquardt, a member of the commission and author of the book, "Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce."
The report finds that worldwide trends in law and reproductive technologies are redefining parenthood in ways that put the interests of adults before the needs of children. "The two-person mother-father model of parenthood," it states, "is being changed to meet adults' rights to children rather than children's needs to know and be raised, whenever possible, by their mother and father."
The revolution in parenthood described in the publication comprises a variety of issues: high divorce rates; single-parent childbearing; the growing use of egg and sperm donors; support for same-sex marriage; and proposals to allow children conceived with the use of sperm and egg donors to have three legal parents.
A legal revolution
The report gives a number of examples of far-reaching legal changes in families, often introduced with a minimum of debate.
-- In Canada the law allowing same-sex marriage also included a provision that eliminated the term "natural parent" in federal law, replacing it with "legal parent." With that law, the locus of power in defining who a child's parents are shifts precipitously from civil society to the state, with the consequences as yet unknown.
-- In Spain, shortly after the legalization of same-sex marriage, the government changed the format of birth certificates for all children. In the future they will read "Progenitor A" and "Progenitor B," instead of "mother" and "father."
-- In India guidelines on assisted reproductive technology issued in June 2005 state that a child born through the use of donated sperm or eggs will not have any right to know the identity of the genetic parents.
Pressure for other, more radical, changes is also under way.
-- In New Zealand and Australia, law commissions have proposed allowing children conceived with use of sperm or egg donors to have three legal parents. The proposals fail to address what would happen if the three parents break up and feud over the child.
-- There is increasing support from influential legal commissions and legal scholars in Canada and the United States for the legalization of group marriage arrangements such as polygamy and polyamory, which involves intimate relationships of three or more people.
-- In Ireland a commission on human reproduction proposed that couples who commission a child through a surrogate mother should automatically be the legal parents of the child, leaving the woman who delivers the baby with no legal standing or protection should she change her mind.
France is one of the few countries resisting the rush to change family law. A parliamentary report on the family and the rights of children, issued last January, stated that "the desire for a child seems to have become a right to a child."
The French report also recommended not legalizing same-sex marriage. Among the reasons it gave was concern about the identity and development of children when the law creates a situation in which there are "two fathers, or two mothers -- which is biologically neither real nor plausible." The parliamentary report insisted on the need for a medical justification for assisted procreation, and that the ban on surrogacy should stand.
Adults first
In "Revolution in Parenthood" author Marquardt explains that the changes in parenthood and family structures are leading to clash between children's and parent's interests. "This redefinition," she warns, "increasingly emphasizes adults' rights to children rather than children's needs to know and be raised, whenever possible, by their mother and father."
"A good society protects the interests of its most vulnerable citizens, especially children," Marquardt's report contends. But the core institution of parenthood is being fundamentally redefined, often in a way that orients it primarily around adults' rights.
A common thread in many of the changes is an alleged "right to a child." The desire for a child is indeed "a powerful force felt deep in the soul," admits Marquardt, and the inability to bear a child of one's own is often felt as an enormous loss. "But," she adds, "the rights and needs of adults who wish to bear children are not the only part of the story."
Adoption has long been available for parents unable to bear children. But the use of assisted reproduction methods has transformed the situation, leading to the deliberate separation of children from their biological mothers and fathers. Biology is obviously not everything, the report notes, but at the same time it does matter.
Family structures are also crucial for children. Studies on the lives of children of divorce show enormous negative consequences for them, not sufficiently considered when no-fault divorce was introduced.
The first generation of donor-conceived children are now reaching adulthood. They were mainly conceived by married heterosexual couples using donor sperm. Marquardt cites a number of cases where the children are now speaking out about the powerful impact on their identity when adults purposefully conceive a child with the clear intention of separating that child from a biological parent. The young people often say they were denied the birthright of being raised by or at least knowing about their biological fathers.
In fact, many of these teen-agers and adults are now forming organizations and are using the Internet to try to contact their sperm donors and find half siblings conceived with the same sperm.
Consent
One issue raised by the offspring of donor children is that the informed consent of the most vulnerable party, the child, is not obtained in reproductive technology procedures that intentionally separate children from one or both of their biological parents.
"Revolution in Parenthood" observes that in recent decades a powerful consensus among social scientists has emerged about the benefits of marriage for children. The current redefinition of parenthood, the report says, is reshaping culture and legal systems "in ways that contribute to further deep uncertainties in the meanings of fatherhood and motherhood."
For example, in the United States at least 10 states allow someone with no biological or adoptive relationship to a child, and no marital relationship to a child's parent, to be assigned parental rights and responsibilities as a psychological or de facto parent.
"In law and culture, the two-natural-parent, mother-father model is falling away, replaced with the idea that children are fine with any one or more adults being called their parents, so long as the appointed parents are nice people," the report comments.
These changes will have far-reaching consequences for the family, children and society. "Those of us who are concerned," concludes the report, "can and should take up and lead a debate about the lives of children and the future of parenthood."
ZENIT included this article in its weekly wrap-up. It discusses the deline of mother/father families. I would have liked to link to the article, but ZENIT articles do not have their own permalinks, so here it is:
Decline of Mom-and-Pop Families
Kids Left Behind as Parenthood Is Redefined
NEW YORK, SEPT. 30, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Family structures and parenthood roles are being redefined without sufficient consideration for the needs of children. This is the warning of a report just published that describes worldwide trends in family law and reproductive technology.
"The Revolution in Parenthood: The Emerging Global Clash Between Adult Rights and Children's Needs" is published by the Commission on Parenthood's Future. The commission "is an independent, nonpartisan group of scholars and leaders," active in the area of the family, according to a press release on the Web site of the Institute for American Values. The New York-based institute is one of the organizations behind the commission.
The author of the report is Elizabeth Marquardt, a member of the commission and author of the book, "Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce."
The report finds that worldwide trends in law and reproductive technologies are redefining parenthood in ways that put the interests of adults before the needs of children. "The two-person mother-father model of parenthood," it states, "is being changed to meet adults' rights to children rather than children's needs to know and be raised, whenever possible, by their mother and father."
The revolution in parenthood described in the publication comprises a variety of issues: high divorce rates; single-parent childbearing; the growing use of egg and sperm donors; support for same-sex marriage; and proposals to allow children conceived with the use of sperm and egg donors to have three legal parents.
A legal revolution
The report gives a number of examples of far-reaching legal changes in families, often introduced with a minimum of debate.
-- In Canada the law allowing same-sex marriage also included a provision that eliminated the term "natural parent" in federal law, replacing it with "legal parent." With that law, the locus of power in defining who a child's parents are shifts precipitously from civil society to the state, with the consequences as yet unknown.
-- In Spain, shortly after the legalization of same-sex marriage, the government changed the format of birth certificates for all children. In the future they will read "Progenitor A" and "Progenitor B," instead of "mother" and "father."
-- In India guidelines on assisted reproductive technology issued in June 2005 state that a child born through the use of donated sperm or eggs will not have any right to know the identity of the genetic parents.
Pressure for other, more radical, changes is also under way.
-- In New Zealand and Australia, law commissions have proposed allowing children conceived with use of sperm or egg donors to have three legal parents. The proposals fail to address what would happen if the three parents break up and feud over the child.
-- There is increasing support from influential legal commissions and legal scholars in Canada and the United States for the legalization of group marriage arrangements such as polygamy and polyamory, which involves intimate relationships of three or more people.
-- In Ireland a commission on human reproduction proposed that couples who commission a child through a surrogate mother should automatically be the legal parents of the child, leaving the woman who delivers the baby with no legal standing or protection should she change her mind.
France is one of the few countries resisting the rush to change family law. A parliamentary report on the family and the rights of children, issued last January, stated that "the desire for a child seems to have become a right to a child."
The French report also recommended not legalizing same-sex marriage. Among the reasons it gave was concern about the identity and development of children when the law creates a situation in which there are "two fathers, or two mothers -- which is biologically neither real nor plausible." The parliamentary report insisted on the need for a medical justification for assisted procreation, and that the ban on surrogacy should stand.
Adults first
In "Revolution in Parenthood" author Marquardt explains that the changes in parenthood and family structures are leading to clash between children's and parent's interests. "This redefinition," she warns, "increasingly emphasizes adults' rights to children rather than children's needs to know and be raised, whenever possible, by their mother and father."
"A good society protects the interests of its most vulnerable citizens, especially children," Marquardt's report contends. But the core institution of parenthood is being fundamentally redefined, often in a way that orients it primarily around adults' rights.
A common thread in many of the changes is an alleged "right to a child." The desire for a child is indeed "a powerful force felt deep in the soul," admits Marquardt, and the inability to bear a child of one's own is often felt as an enormous loss. "But," she adds, "the rights and needs of adults who wish to bear children are not the only part of the story."
Adoption has long been available for parents unable to bear children. But the use of assisted reproduction methods has transformed the situation, leading to the deliberate separation of children from their biological mothers and fathers. Biology is obviously not everything, the report notes, but at the same time it does matter.
Family structures are also crucial for children. Studies on the lives of children of divorce show enormous negative consequences for them, not sufficiently considered when no-fault divorce was introduced.
The first generation of donor-conceived children are now reaching adulthood. They were mainly conceived by married heterosexual couples using donor sperm. Marquardt cites a number of cases where the children are now speaking out about the powerful impact on their identity when adults purposefully conceive a child with the clear intention of separating that child from a biological parent. The young people often say they were denied the birthright of being raised by or at least knowing about their biological fathers.
In fact, many of these teen-agers and adults are now forming organizations and are using the Internet to try to contact their sperm donors and find half siblings conceived with the same sperm.
Consent
One issue raised by the offspring of donor children is that the informed consent of the most vulnerable party, the child, is not obtained in reproductive technology procedures that intentionally separate children from one or both of their biological parents.
"Revolution in Parenthood" observes that in recent decades a powerful consensus among social scientists has emerged about the benefits of marriage for children. The current redefinition of parenthood, the report says, is reshaping culture and legal systems "in ways that contribute to further deep uncertainties in the meanings of fatherhood and motherhood."
For example, in the United States at least 10 states allow someone with no biological or adoptive relationship to a child, and no marital relationship to a child's parent, to be assigned parental rights and responsibilities as a psychological or de facto parent.
"In law and culture, the two-natural-parent, mother-father model is falling away, replaced with the idea that children are fine with any one or more adults being called their parents, so long as the appointed parents are nice people," the report comments.
These changes will have far-reaching consequences for the family, children and society. "Those of us who are concerned," concludes the report, "can and should take up and lead a debate about the lives of children and the future of parenthood."
Monday, September 18, 2006
Thank you Pope John Paul!
I caught a few seconds of the Today Show the other day, and one of the stories they were covering was a preacher who is getting recognition for what he is teaching about faith and sexuality. They said that it was "very frank" talk about sex, love, and life. One of their comments particularly struck me though.
Lester Holt said that the things the preacher has been saying are things that you "wouldn't normally expect to hear from the pulpit" (paraphrased). My first reaction to this was "why wouldn't you expect to hear about sex from the pulpit?", and then it hit me: not everyone knows the great blessing that was given to us by Pope John Paul, Theology of the Body.
What a blessing it is that we live in the time of a pope with such a dynamic and beautiful vision of human sexuality, who not only beheld the vision, but put it into words for all to hear. I had the great privilege of getting married during this era of Theology of the Body, and I am eternally grateful to our great and glorious God for making us in his image this way, and for giving us such a great shepherd to show us the way to live it.
Thank you.
I caught a few seconds of the Today Show the other day, and one of the stories they were covering was a preacher who is getting recognition for what he is teaching about faith and sexuality. They said that it was "very frank" talk about sex, love, and life. One of their comments particularly struck me though.
Lester Holt said that the things the preacher has been saying are things that you "wouldn't normally expect to hear from the pulpit" (paraphrased). My first reaction to this was "why wouldn't you expect to hear about sex from the pulpit?", and then it hit me: not everyone knows the great blessing that was given to us by Pope John Paul, Theology of the Body.
What a blessing it is that we live in the time of a pope with such a dynamic and beautiful vision of human sexuality, who not only beheld the vision, but put it into words for all to hear. I had the great privilege of getting married during this era of Theology of the Body, and I am eternally grateful to our great and glorious God for making us in his image this way, and for giving us such a great shepherd to show us the way to live it.
Thank you.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
These are starting to pile up now...
Another piece today from the WSJ about the declining birth rates around the world. This is an economist's view on the problem, and I think he really misses the ball on the root cause - a fundamental shift in the view of the human person from one of dignity to one of utility. When children are viewed through the lens of economic utility instead of a gift from God, it's a whole new ball game with totally different rules. And I'd have to say that the world is losing at its own game.
Here's the article, and the comments by some that read it, pretty interesting.
Last WSJ article post.
Procreate and Dominate Post.
Let me know what you think.
Another piece today from the WSJ about the declining birth rates around the world. This is an economist's view on the problem, and I think he really misses the ball on the root cause - a fundamental shift in the view of the human person from one of dignity to one of utility. When children are viewed through the lens of economic utility instead of a gift from God, it's a whole new ball game with totally different rules. And I'd have to say that the world is losing at its own game.
Here's the article, and the comments by some that read it, pretty interesting.
Last WSJ article post.
Procreate and Dominate Post.
Let me know what you think.
Monday, August 28, 2006
Husbands love your wives.
This weekend saw one of the most misinterpreted passages of Scripture be read at mass. It truly does have far greater meaning to me now being married. It is one of those reading that I yearn for everyone who hears it to understand its truth. So, rather than ramble on in my own explanation of the reading, I would like to refer you to a beautiful and poignant expounding by Fr. Steven Hamilton of Catholic Ragemonkey. Enjoy!
Wives and husbands, you know what to do!
This weekend saw one of the most misinterpreted passages of Scripture be read at mass. It truly does have far greater meaning to me now being married. It is one of those reading that I yearn for everyone who hears it to understand its truth. So, rather than ramble on in my own explanation of the reading, I would like to refer you to a beautiful and poignant expounding by Fr. Steven Hamilton of Catholic Ragemonkey. Enjoy!
Wives and husbands, you know what to do!
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Procreate and Dominate (Revisited)
As illustrated here at 40:20 some time ago, more and more people are starting to take notice of the repurcussions to society caused by the contraceptive mentality. Here's another gem from the Wall Street Journal. This one focuses on the coming shift in electoral politics as conservatives continue to out-produce liberals on an accelerating basis.
As illustrated here at 40:20 some time ago, more and more people are starting to take notice of the repurcussions to society caused by the contraceptive mentality. Here's another gem from the Wall Street Journal. This one focuses on the coming shift in electoral politics as conservatives continue to out-produce liberals on an accelerating basis.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)