Sexiest Men Alive
While at the grocery store today I noticed People magazine's special on their past Sexiest Men Alive. Brad Pitt was among the four profiled on the cover. I don't really think a guy who knocks up another chick while still married is particularly sexy, but since People is okay with it, why don't they choose Michael Schiavo for next year's Sexiest Man Alive? Chicks dig that cold-blooded infidelity, you know.
Labels: michael schiavo, portents of doom
A happy couple I'm sure
Michael Sciavo--remember him?--got remarried this weekend. (In a Catholic ceremony, no less.) The St. Petersburg Times article on this happy event actually contains the following hilarious sentence:
But in the superheated rhetoric of Terri Schiavo's last months, critics called him an adulterer because he had taken up with another woman while still married.
Uh . . . yeah, I think that's pretty much the legal definition of adultery, yes.
Labels: michael schiavo, modernism, pro-life
Anniversary of Roe v. Wade
Today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. On this day 33 years ago the Supreme Court legalized abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. You will hear many news organizations saying things about this day such as
A closer look at the issue of abortion and some such things. Here is your closer look.
This is a baby that should never have been born. This is a baby whose mother did not want her. This is one of the babies that the current law of our country says do not have the right to live unless their mothers choose to let them live.
This is my baby.
I chose to let her live.
I'm not better than anybody else. I'm not holier or more righteous. I'm never going to be a candidate for sainthood. And having her wasn't easy on me--but it was nowhere near as difficult for me as the pregnancies of some women--and girls--I've known. So I'm not posting this in order to advertise how much better I am than women who do have abortions. Because I'm not.
I'm posting this because despite the legalized violence against women and children that is abortion, the grace of God is still at work.
Labels: pro-life
Encyclical
Pope Benedict's first encyclical to be released on the 25th. It is said to be "a spiritual reflection on Christian love and erotic love, the church's work of charity and its mission to announce Christ."
Labels: encyclicals
Scientists seek rabbit-human embryo
This is so disturbing. I'd say it's a winner in the "How far can we debase the dignity of the human person?" quest, but I'm sure we haven't seen anything yet.
I can't even conceive of the horror of a human consciousness trapped in an animal-human hybrid body. I'd like to say it's impossible because it is impossible for an animal to generate human consciousness, so as a corollary it may be impossible for human consciousness to reside in an animal form. Still: it is revolting that these people believe perfection is attainable, even at the cost of the dignity of the human person, so that they treat human beings as resources to be experimented on and with simply because they are at an "expendable" stage of development. That's the ugliness behind liberalism: progress at any expense, the belief that utopia is perfectly possible, as well as worth it no matter what you have to kill, debase, prostitute, or raze to get there.
British scientists are seeking permission to create hybrid embryos in the lab by fusing human cells with rabbit eggs. If granted consent, the team will use the embryos to produce stem cells that carry genetic defects, in the hope that studying them will help understand the complex mechanisms behind incurable human diseases.
The proposal drew strong criticism from opponents to embryo research who yesterday challenged the ethics of the research and branded the work repugnant.
. . .
To make a hybrid embryo, a human skin cell would be taken from a person with motor neurone disease and injected into a hollowed-out rabbit egg. The resulting embryo would contain only a tiny amount of rabbit DNA in a microscopic structure that generates energy in the cell. The rest of the DNA would be human. If the experiment is successful, within a week, the egg will have divided to form a tiny ball of a 200 or so cells, from which stem cells could be extracted.
. . .
Josephine Quintavalle of the lobby group Comment on Reproductive Ethics said: "There is a lot of innate wisdom in the yuk factor, or repugnance as it is also known. My question is: what will they actually create? It is simplistic or deliberately deceptive to say they are simply making stem cells. In order to obtain stem cells they surely have to go through the blastocyst stage; they have to create a 'something' from which to derive the new cells. What is this something? It must be human to be of any use to researchers."
Labels: modernism, portents of doom, pro-life
Quoted: St. Therese
I have a hard time accepting the fact that I'm not meant to produce Heartbreaking Works of Staggering Genius, so this speaks to me.
"Just as the sun shines equally on the cedar and the little flower, so the Divine Sun shines equally on everyone, great and small. Everything is ordered for their good, just as in nature the seasons are so ordered that the smallest daisy comes to bloom at its appointed time." --St Therese of Lisieux,
The Story of a SoulLabels: quoted, st. therese
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
I was hesitant to see this movie because it was billed as a horror movie, and while I like creepy movies (like
The Grudge), this was was based on a true story, which means it wouldn't be escapist. Plus, I don't know about you, but many's the night after seeing
The Grudge that I lay awake with eyes squeezed shut whilst I envisioned the ghosty girl crawling up under my covers, and I didn't want to repeat this smashing success with EoER. So, I had no plans to see it.
Until Adam brought it home, for some reason. (Actually, he says he was looking for another movie when a random stranger turned to him and said of it, "That's a good movie. You should see it." And of course, why shouldn't a person take the advice of a perfect stranger who could be a serial killer in real life, right?) I decided to go ahead and watch it, and I was pleasantly surprised, for the following reasons:
*It was not gross, not gory, and not sensationalistic.
*The Faith was not presented as medieval, backwards, irrational, or impotent.
*The priest was depicted as loving, faithful, and sincere.
Doing a search afterwards, I found out that the director is a believing Christian, and that the story in real life was much as presented in the film. They were never actually sure if the real-life "Emily Rose" (her actual name was Anneliese Michel) was possessed or merely epileptic, but in the end, the Church did authorize her exorcism. What I didn't find out was whether or not Anneliese had claimed to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary in which Mary tells her that her suffering will be for the greater good, but if this is an artistic embellishment, it is a very good one. (For those who have not seen it, in the movie the priest reads a letter Emily had written before her death in which she explains that she has seen a vision of Mary in which Mary tells her that she may die now and be released, or, by choosing to wait it out to the end, she may awaken people to the reality of evil. Emily chooses to wait it out.)
As a Christian I find it hard to imagine how anybody could doubt the reality of evil, or be awakened to it for the first time by the questions a movie poses, but it seems that that has been the case for many young viewers of the movie. That's why I say that if the vision was an embellishment, it's a good one. Among the many enemies of Christianity it's certain that blatant evil is not the greatest, but rather doubt and agnosticism are. Few people would willingly be seduced by blatant evil, but far too many agree to agnosticism because it seems so reasonable, so intelligent. Yet in the face of blatant evil, it becomes obvious, as this movie shows, that agnosticism is not so much intelligent and reasoned as it is toothless, ineffectual--and defenseless.
Labels: reviews
Bishop Williamson: Girls unfit for school
I was doing some more poking around on traditionalist Catholics (as opposed to orthodox Catholics, which I am) and came up with
this jaw-dropping article from the schismatic SSPX. Quoth the author, Bishop Williamson:
Alas, women going to university is part of the whole massive onslaught on God's Nature which characterizes our times. That girls should not be in universities flows from the nature of universities and from the nature of girls: true universities are for ideas, ideas are not for true girls, so true universities are not for true girls.
Now you say, "Surely not," but this is a reasonable position for this type of person. If women are meant only to stay in the house and raise babies, then why should she be educated? And in fact back in college a guy at our church (this was in the church of Christ, but please
don't think it's representative of the CoC or anything) said the same thing in Sunday school--Women shouldn't go to college because then they might decide to have a career instead of babies.
More insanity:
Now to attract a man so as to marry and become a mother, to nurture and rear children and to retain their father, she needs superior gifts of feeling and instinct, e.g. sensitivity, delicacy, tact, perspicacity, tenderness, etc. by which her mind will correspondingly be swayed. . . . For to do the work of generation, i.e. to ensure nothing less than the survival and continuation of mankind, God designed her mind to run on a complementary and different basis from her man's. His mind is designed not to be swayed by feelings but on the contrary to control them, so that while his feelings may be inferior to hers, his reason is superior. And reason being meant to rule in rational beings, then he is natured to rule over her (Gen. III, 16), as can be seen for example whenever she needs to resort to him for her feelings not to get out of control.
Mothers are supposed to be tender, thus, if women learn to think, they won't be ruled by their feelings . . . so, good mothers don't think. (Actually, I often mutter that.)
A woman can think in this way, or do a good imitation of handling ideas, but then she will not be properly thinking as woman. The dilemma is inescapable: she cannot do what is properly men's thinking or work without cutting across her deepest nature. Did this lawyeress check her hair-do just before coming into court? If she did, she is one distracted lawyer. If she did not, she is one distorted woman.
Women are supposed to be vain and pretty, not thoughtful and grounded.
Girls at university are a double source of confusion, both doing what girls were not created to do, and distracting the boys from doing what the boys were created to do.
By going to university, girls are providing near occasions of sin for boys.
While a university professor is teaching, the boy will be listening to and learning from the words but the girl will naturally be listening to the man and learning by osmosis. Only by an effort will she listen to the words, because her heart is elsewhere - usually on the boys. . . . Rarely, however, will the impressive studentess be a really good student, because the Lord God simply designed her heart and mind for a quite other task. Girls, do you really want to spend so much of your time and of your parents' money on doing something God almost for sure did not mean you to be doing?
Girls are inherently incapable of being learned. Gee, then how did I manage a 4.0 average for three and a half years?
I am glad I am not a traditionalist. Scary.
Labels: bishop williamson, schismatics, sspx
Robert Sungenis & Co.
So as I was looking up an apologetics topic I found
Robert Sungenis' website. I didn't know it, but he's a traditionalist Catholic (and incidentally, insists there is no scientific evidence for heliocentrism, apparently because he misunderstands what really happened between the Church and Galileo). While there I found
this article series arguing that women should still be covering their heads in church, as they did until Vatican II. Now what I can't figure out is why, as he makes this big argument that women should be covering their heads in church, he doesn't make the jump to "women should cover their heads all the time." I mean, if it's ALWAYS a disgrace for a man to have long hair, whether in church or not, how is it not ALWAYS a disgrace for women not to show they are under authority by wearing a veil? Now I don't even buy that we have to cover our heads any longer at all--I'll trust the Vatican when it says we don't (unless it never actually said that and the wearing of veils is still in effect, as Sungenis argues, in which case if the Vatican came out tomorrow and said we WERE supposed to, I'd put on a veil without protest, and I'd probably think it was kinda cool.) But I'll bet Sungenis won't let his wife have short hair, right, because that's like having hair "shorn," which is also supposed to be a sign of not being under authority. So why not make her cover her head all the time, or conversely, why not say that long hair is as good as a head scarf?
I think I'm just looking to pick a fight because these guys are too close to sedevacantists for my comfort.
Also annoying is his reference to women's having "left wifely roles to vie as business executives." You mean, leaving a fossilized role left over from when there was actual contributive work for a woman to do in the home in order to actually function as a part of society? Uh, yeah, I think you would too.
Labels: head coverings, robert sungenis
