Prophetic Shopping Advice?

A reader writes:

In light of the recent events (Katrina, Rita, etc.) some folks are attaching prophetic significance to daily events pointing toward a culmination, and encouraging people to store up 6 months worth of food, among other things.   Some of this was given out (verbally) at our prayer meeting. 

I told the people to use a lot of caution and discernment for such a message.  I privately corresponded with the person who gave the message and told her I had some major problems with it, including making definitive statements about God chastising New Orleans and the US. 

My wife is from a country affected by the tsunami and they lost 15 to 20 K children in the tsunami.  Who was God chastising for that?  I just don’t think we can make specific judgments about these things.  This person is also making connections between withdrawal from Gaza and hurricanes/natural disasters (I believe some of that may be coming from 700 Club and others).

I told the person that if they really believed these warnings and instructions were from the Lord the they should be shared with a priest/bishop in union with the Magisterium of Rome.  If that priest/bishop concluded that this was "from the Lord", then perhaps ( and only perhaps) some credibility could be lent to them.

Do you have any thoughts on this?   We went back and forth with this person by email about five or six times and still she keeps defending the storing of food, etc.  My wife was wondering how in the world most of the poor nations would be able to store up anything, particularly when they generally don’t know where there next meall is coming from.

Since I’m not familiar with the messages, I don’t know if they were meant for folks in other countries or just for the U.S. (i.e., is this supposed to be a worldwide disaster that necessitates the food storing or just one that hits the U.S.) I’d also think that the advice would be "Store it if you can," but in parts of the world where folks can’t, that’s obviously not an option.

That being said, it sounds to me as if you have a pretty good take on the situation. Skepticism here is warranted, and any kind of warning this dire ought to be run past the bishop before people are told to do something as dramatic as storing up six months worth of food for their families.

Not that it’s a bad idea to have that much food in reserve. You never know what may happen in this day and age, and it’s not at all unreasonable to have some food an water available as emergency supplies. Virtually everybody could be hit with a disaster of some kind–natural or artificial–in which they might need supplies until disaster relief can get established.

As regular blog readers know, my grandmother is living in such a situation RIGHT NOW due to Hurricane Rita, and I could join her at any time since the San Andreas Fault can have "The Big One" at a moment’s notice.

No matter where you live, something like that is a possibility (even if it’s just fallout being blown over from from terrorists detonating a nuke in a city a couple of states away).

I therefore consider it advisable for folks to have a certain amount of emergency food and water on hand–at least a few days to a couple of weeks worth–as well as other disaster survival equipment (medicines–particularly prescription medicines you need to take–flashlights, radios, matches, maps, weapons, batteries, iPods, etc.).

Six months, though, is a LONG TIME, and it would require something REALLY AMAZINGLY HUGE to disrupt the economy so severely that anybody would need six months of food. I mean, we’re likely talking about someting on the order of a civilizational reboot at that point (it can’t take FEMA that long to get supplies into the area following a lesser disaster; you only need six months of food if you expect government aid to not be there for six months, and it’s hard to see how that could happen in the current media and political environment without a civilizational reboot in progress). The only things that springs to mind that would be that severe would be something like an asteroid strike or a nearby star going supernova or a doomsday bug or something.

So it sends a really scary message to be telling folks that they need six months of food, and anything that alarming–and EXPENSIVE for a family–ought to be run past Church authorities. That’s not just so people won’t be put to needless worry, it’s also so that if there really WERE a huge disaster coming, folks could be warned.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that the bishop will rule the right way, but one needs to turn to the authorities  that Christ has given his Church.

Furthermore, skepticism regarding any message so dire is the appropriate strategy. The accuracy rate of people with dire messages like this is remarkably LOW, and that has to take that into account when evaluating new cases of folks with dire warnings–particularly if they have no track record of accurate predictions or other evidence that their messages are anything other than the product of their imaginations.

Hope that helps!

AAP: “Prevent Crib Death By Putting Babies In Cribs!”

Okay, BIG RED DISCLAIMER: I’m not a parent (yet) or a medical expert on this type of thing, or a medical expert on any type of thing, and you should not be getting infant-care advice from a stranger on the Internet. That said, I couldn’t help but note this recent release from the American Academy of Pediatrics:

"Infants should be put to sleep on their backs only, not their sides, and pacifiers can be used to help prevent sudden infant death syndrome [SIDS], U.S. pediatricians said on Monday.

"Revised guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics [AAP] issued on Monday also discourage parents from sleeping with their infants at all, saying babies are safer in their own cribs.

"SIDS, the sudden, unexplained death of an infant in the first year of life, is the third leading cause of infant mortality in the United States, causing the deaths of 2,500 infants each year.

"Campaigns to encourage parents and other caregivers to put babies to sleep on their backs instead of their tummies slashed the death rates from SIDS, also known as crib death or cot death, in countries such as Britain and the United States in the 1980s and 1990s."

GET THE STORY.

Does it strike anyone else as strange that the AAP is advising parents to avoid SIDS, also known as "crib death," by advising parents to put their babies in cribs? I might also note that SIDS is extremely rare outside of Western society. In developing societies, parents routinely sleep with their babies and are bemused that Western parents put their infants in cribs that are often in separate rooms from the parental bed. (One very interesting book that explores these differences in parenting styles between Western society and developing societies is Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent by Meredith F. Small.)

Now, whether the "family bed" or some variant of it, such as a sidecar crib attachment, is the right solution for families is something that each family will have to study and decide for itself, and families should definitely consider what medical science has to say when doing so. But it just seems strange to me that the AAP thinks the solution to the tragedy of crib death is to encourage parents to use cribs.

Evil Reptillian Kitten-Eater From THIS Planet!

Python_kitten_eaterCanada may be home to evil reptilian kitten-eaters from another planet, but Florida is home to terrestrial kitten-eaters:Kitten_2

Miami Gardens, Florida – Elidia Rodriguez of Miami Gardens had been looking for her year-old Siamese cat for two days when her son pointed out the bulging Burmese python slithering in her backyard.


Experts say that bulge in the 12-foot snake is probably the missing 15-pound cat.

They python reported has not exploded since eating the cat, suggesting that cats cause less internal combustion in pythons than alligators.

GET THE STORY.
CHT to the reader who e-mailed!

Virus Vs. Bacteria

A reader writes:

hello im currently at college studying beauty therapy. could you tell me what actually is a virus and a bacterial infection is please?

Sure thing. I’m not sure what those have to do with beauty therapy, but then I know nothing about beauty therapy, so here goes:

A virus is basically a kind of molecule that  reproduces itself but needs your cells in order to do that. It can’t reproduce on its own, so it invades your cells and forces them to manufacture more of its genetic material so that it can make copies of itself. Some viruses can do that without harming us, but other viruses cause nasty side effects (like death) when they force our cells to reproduce.

Viruses themselves are not cells. In fact, they’re kind of on the border between living and non-living matter, so often people will say that they’re not really alive. They’re more like complex chemicals that will reproduce themselves if they come into contact with your cells.

Medicine is NOT VERY GOOD at fighting viruses (at least, not YET). Most of the time the only thing to do for a person who has a virus is to treat their symptoms, make them as comfortable as possible, and let the virus run its course. That’s why there’s no good cure for the common cold–it’s caused by a virus.

The best defense against a virus is to avoid getting it in the first place (e.g., hygiene, not having intimate contact with people you aren’t married to, etc.). Watch the TV show Monk for additional hints.

A bacterial infection is an infection caused by bacteria. (A viral infection, by contrast, is an infection caused by a virus).

Unlike viruses, bacteria ARE alive. They are tiny little cells that live and move and reproduce on their own (they do the latter by splitting themselves in two as a form of self-cloning).

Bacteria are all over the place and (here’s the good news) SOME OF THEM ARE BENEFICIAL TO US. In fact, you couldn’t digest food properly if you didn’t have beneficial bacteria living in your stomach.

Other bacteria, though, are harmful, and if we get infected with these, we can get sick. Fortunately, medicine is MUCH BETTER at fighting bacteria than it is at fighting viruses. That’s what antibiotics do. They fight bacteria, though they are completely useless against viruses.

(NOTE TO MEDICAL FOLKS: Sorry if I’ve oversimplified anything in this. I’m trying to keep it non-technical.)

Here are some links to learn more about viruses and bacteria, though the articles at the first two links are kind of technical.

LEARN MORE ABOUT VIRUSES.

LEARN MORE ABOUT BACTERIA.

BUY STUFFED DOLLS OF VIRUSES AND BACTERIA!

Giantmicrobes_2

Do You Know What Your Kids Are Up To?

You may think that you have an open and honest relationship with your children. You may think that of course they’d know that they could always tell you anything, no matter how bad. And you may even be right. But, in this day and age, they may be out arranging for an abortion behind your back.

"In 1985, the summer after my freshman year in high school, my 16-year-old sister told me she was pregnant. Andrea, a National Merit Scholar, knew two things: She wanted an abortion and she didn’t want to tell mom and dad.

"’I’ll help you,’ I said, honored that she’d turned to me.

"Andrea wasn’t worried that my parents would throw her out or beat her. She, like many minors who become pregnant, was more concerned about preserving her relationship with her family.

"’I remember feeling like I can’t add this to the official roster of things I’ve done,’ Andrea told me recently. ‘I was too young emotionally to have sex, but physically I wasn’t. Any conversation I would have had with mom and dad would have ended with them telling me not to do it.’ She didn’t want them to know anything about what felt to her like ‘a big mistake.’"

From the point of view of a teenager, it might seem reasonable to help your sister hide an embarrassing "mistake" from your parents, but surely the adults to whom this duo turned would encourage them to tell Mom and Dad anyway, particularly since the pregnant girl knew her parents would not hurt her and even more particularly since there was a parental notification law in place requiring that both parents consent to this young woman’s abortion.

If you were naive enough to think that, you thought wrong.

"Andrea had $60 saved from her job at Burger King. I helped her raise the additional $200 she needed by borrowing it from an acquaintance at school. Although North Dakota had had an abortion clinic since 1980, there was also a law, in place since 1981, stipulating that both parents consent to a minor’s abortion. Andrea went through the process of getting a judicial bypass. The clinic steered her though an interview with an amenable judge, I got her the money just in time and Andrea got her abortion. Although the experience was difficult for her, we were rather proud that we’d gone through it alone."

GET THE STORY.

Two young girls, one sixteen and the other probably fourteen or fifteen, managed to go to court and obtain a "judicial bypass" around their state’s parental consent laws, all without their parents ever being the wiser… at the time. Once Mom and Dad found out, they were rightly "heartsick and frustrated." The author of this essay professes "understanding" for their pain, yet still piously pronounces that parents should only know that their minor daughter is undergoing a major medical procedure — setting aside the fact that the major medical procedure in question also kills their grandchild — if their daughter "willingly" wants to tell them.

Words fail to capture just how mind-bogglingly stupid our society has become. But then, as Mark Shea has so pithily put it, sin makes you stupid.

Join The Rebel Alliance!

Captain Ed has a GOOD ARTICLE on the Harriet Miers disaster.

(There’s also CONFIRMATION FROM BORK that the Miers disaster IS a disaster–from the man who knows more about confirmation disasters than anybody else.)

Captain Ed divides conservative blogger reaction to the Miers disaster into three camps: The (very tiny) Loyalist Army (who support the nomination), the (vast) Rebel Alliance (who don’t), and the Trench-Dwelling Dogfaces (who are caught between the two; the good captain counts himself as one of these).

When it comes to the Harriet Miers nomination, I’m a rebel!

I think that the situation is intolerable, and my views on the matter have hardened as I’ve learned more about it. (Helpful reminder: What’s mine is mine.)

Conservatives have worked for thirty years to have the opportunity to put together a constellation of Supreme Court justices in place that would be willing to overturn Roe v. Wade, which has led to TENS OF MILLIONS OF BABY-MURDERS IN THE U.S. thus far, with MILLIONS AND MILLIONS MORE TO COME.

Bush ran on the promise that he would appoint justices like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, yet instead of doing so in a straightforward manner and saying, "Hey, this is what I said I’d do," he switches to a stealth nominee strategy, which is precisely the kind of capitulation that gave us Darth Souter.

John "I don’t really have an overarching philosophy of consitutional interpretation" Roberts may well not vote to overturn Roe, and Harriet "I need a crash course in constitutional law before my hearings" Miers may not either. Bush has said that he has no anti-Roe litmus test on his nominees, and one has to take him at his word.

Further, the pressure he feels to go all stealthy with his nominees is a product of the PUSILLANIMOUS WAY IN WHICH HE DEALT WITH THE FILIBUSTER ISSUE IN THE FIRST PLACE (Warning: Evil registration requirement).

John Hinderaker over at Powerline is saying that "it’s time to move on" when it comes to protesting the Miers nomination, but I disagree.

If you’re a Republican first and a conservative second then it makes sense to want to quieten things down lest the party be so ruptured come 2006 that it suffers on Election Day.

But I don’t care a flip about political parties. I care about principle, and BABIES ARE BEING MURDERED OUT THERE (not to mention all the other HORRENDOUS unconstitutional things that SCOTUS has forced on us in recent decades).

Pro-lifers have worked too hard for too long to let a petulant president SQUANDER a chance to save millions of babies lives by shortening the abortion holocaust. This is THE MOMENT for which Bush was elected, and he’s blowing it royally.

I therefore DON’T think that it’s time to "move on." I think that it’s time for pro-lifers to send a STRONG MESSAGE to the Senate and the president that this is NOT what they were put in office for.

If Miers nomination can be derailed, great.

If not, a painful enough lesson can be taught that this DOES NOT HAPPEN AGAIN (and Bush is likely to get a third and even fourth chance to nominate someone).

That lesson may have to wait until 2006, but I’d rather have it learned now.

The sooner the better.

I’m therefore encouraging folks to enlist in the Rebel Alliance!

CALL YOUR SENATORS (BOTH OF THEM, REGARDLESS OF THEIR POLITICAL PARTY) AND TELL THEM HOW UNHAPPY YOU ARE WITH MIERS.

Call the president, too, and tell him how unhappy you are!

The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.

REMEMBER: ACQUIESCING AND FAILING TO PROTEST THIS DISASTER WILL ONLY ENCOURAGE SIMILAR DISASTERS IN THE FUTURE!

“Two By Two, Hands Of Blue”

The other day I was having routine maintenance done on my pickup and I noticed the employees of Jiffy Lube were wearing something VERY unusual that I had seen before:

Dsc00295

This seems to prove that either Jiffy Lube is part of the BLUE SUN CORPORATION or that the Blue Sun Corporation will evolve out of Jiffy Lube, 500 years hence.

Or maybe it just means that Joss Whedon goes to Jiffy Lube.

Fortunately, none of their customers were bleeding from their eyes and fingernails.

Gay Blessings From The Church Of Sweden

The Church of England has taken it on the chin for its capitulation to the sexual revolution in all of its perverse forms, but it is not the only national church in the process of shrugging off traditional Christian morality. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden is inching closer to offering "blessing ceremonies" to homosexual couples, who profess themselves still dissatisfied at the potential compromise and holding out for "marriage":

"The Church of Sweden has come a step closer to introducing church blessings for gay couples who have signed civil partnership agreements, after a powerful church committee overwhelmingly approved the plans.

"Gay rights group RFSL welcomed the news, but said it would not be satisfied until same-sex couples got the same treatment as their straight counterparts.

"The liturgical committee of the Church Assembly has said that a service of blessing for gay partnerships should be included in the church’s official guidelines.

"The final decision will be taken by the full Church Assembly later this month, but the proposal won a large majority on the committee, with twelve out of fifteen members supporting the blessings."

A gay rights activist worries that it will take another generation before the Church of Sweden allows for gay "marriage":

"Gay rights groups have welcomed the announcement, but Sören Andersson, chairman of Sweden’s largest gay organisation, RFSL, told The Local that he would have liked the church to have gone further.

"’While I think this is a positive step that they are acknowledging relationships is this way, I think it’s sad that they won’t offer the same ceremonies to all couples.’

"’It has taken 30 years for us to come this far; I hope it doesn’t take another 30 years for us to be offered the same ceremonies.’"

GET THE STORY.

Oh, I don’t think he need worry about that. The way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Church of Sweden cave to the pressure for gay "marriage" within five years.

When Martin Luther and his fellow Reformers stripped northern Europe from the Catholic Church and nationalized the churches in Protestant countries, I wonder if they realized that they would be politicizing religion? History has shown that Caesar is rarely satisfied with his due; without a universal Church led by a supranational pope to keep Caesar in check, the church in a particular country is all too vulnerable to becoming the plaything of Caesar’s lobbyists and activists.

The Eucharist & Excommunication

A reader recently wrote me and asked about whether he might be in a state of excommunication. I’d reproduce text from his e-mails here, but they were rather detailed, so let me summarize:

The reader had worked as an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion and had been taught to purify the chalice by pouring a small amount of water into it and then pouring the result down the sacrarium. He says that he would not have violated any Church laws that he had known about, but he learned that it is an offense incurring automatic excommunication to throw away the sacred species. Although he could not remember any times when he poured out the Precious Blood itself, he was concerned about whether he might be excommunicated.

He’s not.

I told him this by e-mail and promised a follow-up post to explain why, so here goes:

First, if sufficient water is added to what drops of the Precious Blood may remain in the chalice so that they no longer would appear to be wine in the common estimation of men then the Real Presence does not remain. Neither do the sacred species since what remains is not sacred (no Real Presence) and not the species of wine any more (does not appear to be wine in the common estimation of men).

Therefore, there are no sacred species to throw away in this circumstance and thus no possibility of triggering excommunication.

But suppose that there was a case in which no water was added to the sacred species and some of them were simply poured into the sacrarium. Would that trigger the excommunication?

Not under the circumstances the reader described by e-mail.

Although the Code of Canon Law provides automatic excommunication for a small number of offenses, it also provides an extensive list of exceptions in which penalties such as excommunication will not be triggered. According to the Code:

Can. 1323 The following are not subject to a penalty when they have violated a law or precept: . . .

2/ a person who without negligence was ignorant that he or she violated a law or precept; inadvertence and error are equivalent to ignorance;

That right there is going to block any excommunication from happening in the case of the reader. He had been trained to do his task a certain way and did what he was told. He was not a canon law expert who negligently failed to examine the law. He was an ordinary person who was simply doing what he had been trained to do.

We have NO EVIDENCE that the law against throwing away the sacred species was even violated, but since the reader was innocently unaware of the law against doing so, he would not be struck by the penalty of excommunication.

Note also that the canon provides that inadvertence or error are equivalent to error. This means that even if he did know about the law against throwing away the sacred species, excommunication still would not result if he had inadvertently failed to pour water, or enough water, into the chalice to remove the appearances of wine. Nor would a person be excommunicated who threw away the sacred species while erroneously thinking that they were unconsecrated or that they had ceased to have the Real Presence.

There is also another ground that occurs to me for why excommunication in his case would be blocked. The following canon provides:

Can. 1324 §1. The perpetrator of a violation is not exempt from a penalty, but the penalty established by law or precept must be tempered or a penance employed in its place if the delict was committed: . . .

9/ by a person who without negligence did not know that a penalty was attached to a law or precept; . . .

§3. In the circumstances mentioned in §1, the accused is not bound by a latae sententiae [automatic] penalty.

The automatic or latae sententiae excommunication that attaches to throwing away the sacred species does not apply, according to §3 of this canon, to people mentioned in §1. Among those mentioned in §1 are those who without negligence did not know that a penalty was attached to a law.

The reader did not know that there was an automatic excommunication attached to throwing away the sacred species (which–it should be reiterated–we have no evidence that he even did). He was not a canon law expert who be expected to have checked this out on his own, so there was no negligence. Therefore, he is not bound by the automatic excommunication.

We therefore have no evidence that the reader even did throw away the sacred species, and even if he had the excommunication would not have taken effect because he did not know about the law (can. 1323) or the penalty (can. 1324). Further, even if he had known about both he still would not be struck by the penalty if he had thrown away the sacred species inadvertently or through error.

All this goes to show how really HARD it is to get automatically excommunicated for something (and these are only a FEW of the conditions that block penalties from coming into effect). An ordinary person really has to know BOTH the law AND the penalty AND do it anyway, WITHOUT inadvertence OR error.

I mention this because a lot of people end up committing excommunicable offenses (e.g., abortion) and later learn of the penalty’s existence and get worried that they may be excommunicated. In the vast majority of such cases, they’re not.

For an ordinary person, you really have to know EXACTLY what you are doing, AND the penalty attached, and do it anyway.

There thus should not be any scruples on this point.

20