Mother, Abort Thyself

Pro-abortion activists like to opine that if abortion is "safe, legal, and rare," then mothers who don’t want their children won’t turn to vacuum cleaners and clothes hangers when they decide to abort their children. But the self-abortionists are still out there. Apparently on the very day that her baby was due, one such self-abortionist decided to use a gun.

"The defense attorney for a woman accused of shooting herself in the stomach and killing her unborn child says an abortion charge won’t hold up in court.

"Suffolk’s lead prosecutor says his office is still investigating the crime.

"Tammy Skinner, 22, is charged with inducing an abortion and filing a false police report. Prosecutors have already said they plan to drop a firearms charge because it doesn’t apply."

GET THE STORY.

Prosecutors are still trying to figure out exactly what crime the woman committed. They may not get a self-induced abortion charge to stick, they’ve dropped a firearms charge, and Virginia’s fetal homicide law only provides justice to pre-born children whose mothers wanted them. That’s because the law is aimed at prosecuting those who kill the "fetus of another."

Before legalized abortion, the charge would have been simple: Murder. There also would not have been this kind of sympathetic clucking for the murderer:

"’I understand that people feel moral outrage over this,’ Martingayle said. ‘And there is likely to be some criminal punishment. But perhaps [Ms. Skinner] been punished enough.’"

Tell that to the baby girl who was shot by her own mother.

Proof!

Or at least as much proof as photographs can provide these days! (The "pictures don’t lie" being long over.)

Yes, I’ve told y’all about my regular activities each week square dancing and round dancing, but here are the pictures to prove it!

On Sunday nights I dance with a group known as the Sundown Squares. (In addition to my Tuesday night group, the Valley Twirlers, and my Friday night group, the Alpine Squares–beside random pickup dances on other nights.)

Recently the Sundown Squares had a party night, complete with volunteer photographers, and they captured these images.

First, here’s a picture of me with my round dance class:
Rounddancersteachersright_1

That’s me in the middle of the back row. Our teachers are the man and woman on the far right. And the ladies in the middle of the front line are really, really small. (Makes them extra cute, don’t you think?)

For those who may not know, round dance is the same thing as ballroom dancing, except that there’s a "cuer" who cues the moves that you’re supposed to make, so that you don’t have to have a dance memorized in order to do it. As long as you know the moves, you can do any dance the cuer puts on the turntable (or CD player, or iPod, or computer). The presence of a cuer lets you do many more dances than you could in traditional ballroom dancing, making it much more diverse and fun.

After my round dance class is finished, I switch to square dancing with the Sundown Squares, and here’s a picture of that:
Stevepatjimmy

In this picture, I and my fellow dancers are in lines, doing an "eight-to-the-middle-and-back" move.

You may notice in these pictures that many of the other dancers are older than I am. Partly that’s because of the particular composition of the Sundown Squares, and partly it’s because most young folks today are glued to their iPods and are too lazy for real dancing. I’m far from the youngest member of the group, though, and there are some who aren’t even in their teens yet.

But who cares about age?! It’s all about fun!

CHECK OUT THE GROUP’S BLOG!

New Star Alert!

OphiuchusThere’s a new star in the sky this month.

This new star is a nova (Latin, "new"–duh!).

It’s actually a nova that we’ve known about for a while, but you normally can’t see it with the naked eye.

Why can we see it now?

The star is RS Ophiuchi, and it is a very rare kind of star, known as a recurrent nova–a nova that doesn’t just brighten up once but does so repeatedly.

There are only seven known stars that behave like RS Ophiuchi.

Here’s how it works: In its star system there are two stars: a red giant and a white dwarf.

Matter from the red giant is spilling out and forming an accretion disk around the white dwarf.

The white dwarf itself doesn’t have the mass needed for additional fusion reactions, so it slowly cools down.

But if there is another body–like a nearby red giant–discharging matter then eventually the matter in the accretion disk around the white dwarf gets massive enough that fusion can occur, and then

BANG!

there’s new nova outburst as it blows this matter outward. Hence: recurrent nova.

RS Ophiuchi is currently experiencing an outburst, which made it bright enough to be seen with the naked eye (normally you have to use artificial magnification to see it). The outburst was first  noticed in February, and astronomers all over the world have been watching.

Why?

Because RS Ophiuchi doesn’t do this very often. The last time was in 1985, or 21 years ago.

I don’t know if the star has faded to the point that it can no longer be seen with the naked eye, but if not then this may be your last chance to see it with the naked eye for . . . quite a while. We don’t know when it’ll flare up again.

LISTEN TO A SLACKER ASTRONOMY STORY ON THE CURRENT FLARE UP OF RS OPHIUCHI.

Panel: Soviets Behind 1981 Assassination Attempt

Third_secretEXCERPTS:

An Italian parliamentary commission concluded "beyond any reasonable doubt" that the Soviet Union was behind the 1981 attempt to kill Pope John Paul II _ a theory long alleged but never proved, according to a draft report made available Thursday.

"This commission believes, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the leaders of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate the pope Karol Wojtyla," said a draft of the commission’s report obtained by The Associated Press. Wojtyla was John Paul’s Polish name.

The draft has no bearing on any judicial investigations, which have long been closed. If the commission approves the report in its final form, that would mark the first time an official body had blamed the Soviet Union for shooting John Paul.

The Italian report said Soviet military intelligence _ and not the KGB _ was responsible.

GET THE STORY.

GET THE STORY FROM HEAVEN’S PERSPECTIVE.

THE TEXT OF ALL THREE PARTS OF THE FATIMA SECRET.

The Cold Truth About Antarctic Ice

AntarcticicechangeIf you’re like me, you may have run across a number of stories recently about how Antarctic ice is melting and causing sea levels to rise and how all this is proof of global warming.

Well, there’s another side to this story that you probably haven’t been told.

It’s true that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) has been losing mass, but what you likely haven’t heard is that the Eastern Antartic Ice Sheet (EAIS) is GAINING mass.

You also likely haven’t heard that hte EAIS is three times the size of the WAIS, and that the mass it’s gaining more than offsets the mass being lost by the WAIS. This means that, on a continent-wide basis, Antarctica has actually been GAINING ice mass.

In the map above, the minuses represent where Antactica is losing ice and the plusses represent where it is gaining ice (due to snowfall).

ALL THIS IS EXPLORED IN THIS VERY INTERESTING ARTICLE BY ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENTIST DR. PATRICK MICHAELS.

Something that Dr. Michaels doens’t mention but that immediately struck me upon looking at the map is that the minuses tend to occur near the coast of Antarctica (Duh! That’s where the ice slides toward and falls into the sea!), and that the western part of Antarctica is shaped in such a way that may lead to it being Antarctica’s natural ice slough-off point.

I just hope that so much ice doesn’t slough off that it uncovers the hideous Plateau of Leng or Kadath of the Cold Wastes!

Anointing Of The Sick For Infants

A reader writes:

I’ve a friend who’s 8month old child (baptized child) has a medical syndrome and is having increasing medical problems. I think that the child should receive the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick. That it will impart grace and possible healing and strengthen the child in it’s health battles, even though they are too young to understand. I believe that the power of the Holy Spirit is present in this anointing, and prayers. Others seem to be leaning so much towards the forgiveness of sins in the sacrament, that they are overlooking the strengthen and healing portion of the sacrament. I realize that the child has nothing to forgive, But as a baptized catholic christian they are in titled to the strength that this sacrament can give. Do you think that this is appropriate for an infant.

I agree with you! Infants should be able to receive the anointing of the sick!

Unfortunately, canon law in the Latin Rite of the Church does not presently provide for this. The Latin Code of Canon Law provides:

Can.  1004 ยง1. The anointing of the sick can be administered to a member of the faithful who, having reached the use of reason, begins to be in danger due to sickness or old age.

I consider the age-of-reason requirement absolutely reprehensible. It is a remnant, so far as I can tell, of the mindset that existed in the last number of centuries, in which the anointing of the sick (then called "extreme unction," meaning final anointing) was viewed principally as a preparation for death. From that perspective, children below the age of reason wouldn’t need it since they can’t sin gravely.

But that’s NOT why Christ gave us this sacrament. He didn’t give it to us just as a preparation for death but as a means of healing, which is the way Scripture presents it (the forgiveness of sins being a secondary aspect, which is why even those who receive the anointing of the sick still need to go to confession if they are able to confess).

Whether you are sick and need healing has absolutely ZERO to do with whether you have reached the age of reason, and so I do not approve of denying this sacrament to gravely sick children under the age of reason.

Fortunately, following Vatican II, the Church started moving away from envisioning this sacrament principally as a preparation for death. Unfortunately, not all aspects of its law regarding this sacrament have yet caught up with that insight.

So what would I do if I had a gravely sick child below the age of reason? If my child was in danger of death I would immediately seek out a priest in one of the Eastern Catholic Churches (i.e., Eastern Catholics in union with the pope, not Eastern Orthodox).

Their equivalent to the Code of Canon Law–known as the Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches (CCEO)–contains NO age-based requirement for the administration of this sacrament. It merely says:

Can. 738. The Christian faithful are to receive the anointing of the sick gladly whenever they are gravely ill; pastors of souls and the relatives of the sick are to see to it that the sick find relief in this sacrament at an appropriate time.

The CCEO also contains NO prohibition on Eastern priests administering this sacrament to Latin Catholics, so I would take my child to an Eastern priest in a hot second if the child was gravely ill.

Hopefully the deficiency in the Latin Code of Canon Law will be corrected in short order.

A Resurgence Of Devotion

Europe may be in its spiritual death throes, but the resurrection of Catholicism across the pond has already begun:

"Vatican officials say young people’s thirst for moral direction is driving a resurging interest in Catholicism. ‘There’s a reawakening after a time of secularization,’ says Sister Giuseppina Fragasso, vice president of the Vatican’s association for cloistered monks and nuns.

"The number of Catholic clergy has dwindled worldwide since peaking in the late 1960s. In particular, it’s getting harder to attract new blood to the priesthood. According to the Vatican’s statistics office, monasteries have been closing too fast for their researchers to keep track. While other Christian sects attract priests by allowing them to marry and by inviting women to ordination, the Catholic church still prohibits such activities.

"But the tide is turning in Italy. Nearly half of adult Catholics attend mass at least weekly, up from 35 percent who did so in 1980.

"Clergy credit much of young people’s interest in Catholicism to the late Pope John Paul II, stressing the impact of the World Youth Days he started in 1984. Catholic fervor reached a crescendo with his death in April 2005. ‘This pope really brought the faith closer to young people; there was a strong bond between him and us,’ affirms Giovanna, a young biologist praying by John Paul II’s tomb in Rome."

GET THE STORY.

Bad Math

Tim Powers writes:

Has the Church definitively said that animals _don’t_ go to Heaven, or at least have some posthumous happy state? They suffer, but they don’t sin. They’re not fallen. Their suffering-&-death is both real and undeserved, which is an inbalance, bad math, unless it’s made up for somewhere else in the equation. After all, we’re told that "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid" and all. Maybe that’s literal!

Maybe, though the literal sense of those texts is that God will send a great age of peace, during which it will be as if all strife–even between animals–will be eliminated. There may be an even more literal fulfillment in the next life–if animals have souls that can survive death–but we don’t have strong reason to think that it will happen in this one.

As to whether animals have a posthumous happy state, the standard position is that they don’t because their souls are unable to survive death. This is not something that the Church has taught definitively (infallibly), but it is the standard opinion among theologians historically.

(Note for those who may want to be cantankerous about animals being
unfallen: Many would say that they suffer bad effects due to our fall,
but that doesn’t mean that they themselves sinned. I also would be
hesitant to say that carnivorism only came into the universe with the
fall of man. I tend to go with Aquinas in saying that human death entered the world through the fall of man, but animal death was already there.)

You’re right, though, that there is a bad math problem here: Many animals do seem to live very short lives in which they suffer more than they benefit, making it look like they come out on the negative side of the equation, which is hard to square with God’s justice and mercy.

This isn’t a problem (or not nearly as much of one) for humans since our souls survive death and so–no matter how much we’re banged around in this life–God can make it up to us in the next.

But how can we solve the equation for animals? How can we make sure that they get more good out of existence than bad? It would seem that there are several possible ways:

  1. Animals are sufficiently insignificant in the moral order that it really doesn’t matter what happens to them individually and whether they suffer more than they benefit from life.
  2. Animals actually do benefit more than they suffer, because (despite how it may appear if you’re a baby mouse being eaten by a predator who has discovered your warm, cozy nest) life ITSELF is of sufficient value that any amount of it overbalances whatever sufferings you may experience in it (at least if you’re an animal).
  3. Animals have excess sufferings made up to them in a mysterious way that we can’t perceive in the last moments of life.
  4. Animals really do survive death–at least the ones who need some suffering made up to them–but they don’t survive permanently, the way we do.
  5. Animals do survive permanently the way we do.

Each of these has benefits and problems associated with it. The standard account would presumably go in the direction of #1 or #2.

#5, though, seems to be the most common sensically attractive to many (especially children suffering from the loss of a pet), though it isn’t the way most theologians have gone historically.

An especially creative solution (that comes from C. S. Lewis, if I recall correctly) to what to tell a child who is grieving for a pet is that the pet will be in heaven "if you need it" since God will certainly let us have everything we need in heaven. I’ve used that one myself in answering questions on the Catholic Answers Live kids’ show.