Debunking an urban myth
Supposedly, the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" was written during the Elizabethan persecutions of Catholics as a way to teach young Catholics the Catechism without alerting the authorities. Not true, as
Snopes.com cogently explains. Instead, the song was written during the eighteenth century and has no more meaning than a dirty limerick. Unfortunately, everybody--including my RCIA instructor, who repeated the story in our RCIA class last year--seems to think it's true. A nice story, but hey, if it's not true, then it's not true.
Also read
this page for a quite humorous account of what happens when you actually try to send the twelve gifts mentioned in the song.
Labels: religious myths
Swiss hospital to allow suicide
Excerpt of a Reuters article from yesterday. Why it is evil: It means that doctors will stand by and allow--no,
encourage--harm to come to their patients because they have been judged unfit to live.
A Swiss hospital will allow terminally ill patients to commit suicide within its walls, a spokesman said on Sunday, becoming the first in the country to allow the practice.
The university hospital in Lausanne had previously sent patients wishing to die home, where they could call on one of the country's assisted suicide organisations to help them take their lives, the spokesman said.
He said the hospital had decided to allow such organisations access from next year for patients who were so ill that they could not be transported to their homes, but would not itself help people take their lives.
"We're not asking our doctors to assist ... suicide, but we will open our gates to the associations," said Alberto Crespo, responsible for legal and ethical affairs at the hospital.
Assisting suicide is legal in Switzerland. But euthanasia - for instance when a doctor gives a patient a lethal injection on the patient's request - is not.
. . . .
Suicide in the hospital will only be allowed under strict conditions, Crespo said. Patients have to be terminally ill, capable of making decisions and sane.
Labels: modernism, reasons to panic
Article on body modification
Here's an article I found on the morality of tattooes and body piercing. Overall, it was sensible and I mostly agreed with it. My conclusion is the same, that there is a limit to body piercing and modification, after which you are profaning the body, and in fact my saying so got me kicked off BME. However, this was odd: the author states, "Ethiopian Christians, to name one group, wear tattoo crosses on their foreheads," and does so as an example of socially and morally acceptable modification. Yet later, he lists unsuitablity as a reason a particular tattoo might be wrong, and says,
Sometimes people tattoo themselves with a big image of a crucifix or other holy pictures. The human body is a most unsuitable place for such an image, even if it be a beautiful one. Whenever these people go swimming, for example, they are exhibiting this image in an inappropriate fashion. No priest would ever go down to a shopping center in Mass vestments, not because there is something wrong with vestments, but because there is a time and a place for donning special religious symbols.
So there's a bit of a contradiction there, but I think any reasonable Catholic with good taste should be able to tell whether the image they plan is unsuitable or not. Personally, I plan another tattoo of a religious nature, one which will, in my mind, mark me as belonging to God, and I don't think of it as unsuitable because of its intent, which would be the same as the practice in ancient Israel of piercing the ear of a slave when he chose to remain with his master rather than accept liberation.
Also, I didn't read the comments of other forum users, because generally those people are cranks anyway.
EDIT: Something I didn't say when I posted the article was that the tattooing God commanded against had nothing to do with decoration but with pagan funerary practices. If the Israelites had tattooed themselves, even as mere decoration, they might have appeared to have been participating in such rites. Thus, they had to avoid the appearance of evil. So in getting tattooes/piercings today, we should also avoid the appearance of evil, but like I said, a reasonable Christian should be able to tell whether the mod he wants will make him appear to be a part of evil. (Of course you can't please everybody, there'll always be somebody who thinks you're sinning for putting a piece of jewelry in a culturally unusual place. If, of course, it's in a visible spot. ;)
Labels: body modification
Stem Cells from Cord Blood
I got this story from the president of my pro-life group. No author was credited. The story does not say so, but I'm pretty sure the reason Democrats are holding up the vote is because some groups want it believed that the only usable stem cells are ones taken from cloned embryos. If it becomes known that not only are cord blood stem cells, but
adult stem cells as well, equally promising, they will have less support from the public for cloning. God knows why anybody would think cloning headless babies purely for experimentation is a cause to celebrate, but the only reason most people agree to it is because they've been told the stem cells will cure all ills. Hmm. That excuse seems to be used for a lot of horrific violations of human dignity, doesn't it? Anyway, here's the story.
Senate Democrats are holding up a vote on
non-controversial legislation that would support the use
of umbilical-cord blood as a source for stem cells. The
technology is already offering cures and has a promising
future.
The bill provides for the creation of a public inventory
of 150,000 units of cord blood, which is estimated to
provide well-matched transplants for up to 90 percent of
the population in need.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who is a
medical doctor, said he was disappointed that the
legislation was being stalled.
"This simple, non-controversial legislation is vitally
important to providing for the health and welfare of
patients now and in the future," he said. "There has been
virtually no opposition to this legislation, but it is
being blocked for political purposes."
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, led the move to block a scheduled
vote Thursday evening.
Amanda Banks, federal issues analyst for Focus on the
Family Action, said people need to speak out and tell
Harkin and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to
stop holding cures hostage.
"Senators Harkin and Reid are playing politics with human
lives. They claim to support the cord blood legislation,
yet they will not allow a vote on it," she said. If
Democrats do not agree to a vote today before they go out
of session, it will be several months before a vote is
possible. That means cures will be delayed for months as
hundreds, if not thousands, of patients await a cord-blood
match."
TAKE ACTION: Call the Washington, D.C., and district
offices of Sens. Harkin and Reid immediately. Ask them to
allow a vote on H.R. 2520, the Stem Cell Therapeutic and
Research Act of 2005 today.
Sen. Tom Harkin:
Washington: (202)224-3254
Des Moines: (515)284-4574
Sen. Harry Reid:
Washington: (202)224-3542
Las Vegas: (702)388-5020
Labels: pro-life
An intervention
I totally forgot to post about the intervention! By request, it went like this.
Basically, the Intervener, as we'll call him, is somebody from Adam's old church from when he was growing up. He is actually a convert to the church of Christ from the Greek Orthodox Church. I'm not sure how long Adam knew him before I met the guy, but I've known him for about ten years. And I have never been too fond of him, and I know he has a bad opinion of me (but who doesn't, right?). So, he comes by about seven. The kids immediately start going berserk and showing off, so for the half hour that goes by with them still up, it's chit-chat. Finally my mother-in-law puts them to bed, but now the Intervener seems to be taking his time getting around to the task at hand. He seems unwilling to come right and say, "So, you're Catholic now, hmm?"
Eventually he manages via the chit-chat to start alluding to our abject wickedness. He begins to talk about God's way versus our own way, about people who worship the way they want to instead of the way God wants us to. How it can be pride that causes us to do that, or emotion, and how we have to be willing to see that. (By "we" I mean he was speaking generally; he never directed anything at us specifically.) We got real quiet, me knitting like mad, because his manner prevented us from really engaging him. Beginning to argue with him would have made us seem defensive. So, we just nodded and said, "oh, that's true, yes." He went on with talk about Authority, and how we have to have one. I bit my tongue to keep from making a snarky comment like, "Yep, when people deny authority you get people like Alexander Campbell." We just went on nodding, both of us wondering if he was going to be direct anytime soon or what.
Ten o'clock came, and I was yawning, so rather anticlimatically he wrapped it up by asking us for our email address. Handing it over, we both expected that upon arriving home we'd have a carefully worded email from him, but to our surprise, we haven't heard from him yet.
Later Adam said he was surprised at how quiet I was, but really, knowing what a bad opinion the guy has of me, I was too shy to say anything and risk his outright hostility.
And that was that.
Labels: interventions
