It is terrible how much harm we can do if we allow ourselves to be carried away by the fear or the shame of being seen as Christians in ordinary life.

– St. Josemaria Escriva, Furrow, #36

Blogging from the in-laws...

I think I forgot to mention that Chris & I are spending New Year, and the second week of our holiday, at his parent's house.



His parents live a 5hour train journey from where we live, so we only get to see them every couple of months.


So yesterday (Friday) we made the crazy 5 hour journey here. Anyone in England I'm sure can sympathise with me if I were to start talking about the price 0f train tickets. they are C.R.A.Z.I.L.Y expensive. and that's not just me being a whiney student; it's an objective fact! (we're talking over 200pounds for Chris & I to get here & back home!)


So in order to cut costs Chris & I hunted for the cheapest deals...and we found a mega mega cheap deal...only hitch is that it involves taking the last train..and thus we arrived here at 1:30am, and were in bed by 3:30am!! (I am not fond of late nights during my precious holiday time! They take away from my precious precious sleep!)


Then this morning Chris's little cousins (aged 4-8) arrived at what seemed to me like the crack of dawn (it was probably more like 10am!) so I've been pretty tired today!





But on the plus side...we had Christmas all over again with Chris's family!





Look what his parents got us:

an entire nativity set with baby Jesus & manger, Mary, Joseph, Angel, Shepherd, sheet, ox, donkey, 3 wise-men! The figures are made of some kind of resin, and the facial expressions are beautiful!

We also got a selection of other stuff (chocolates, and nice foods from their local 'continental market'! yummy!)

Chris's siblings got him a POWER-BALL which he has been playing with non-stop! (*rolls eyes and mumbles something about boys and their toys!*) (don't ask..apparently it's some muscle-strengthening thing..!)

What else did we do today...oh yes, we went to Mass this morning! The last time I was in that Church was EXACTLY 5 months ago, just before I ran out, hand-in-hand with my new husband, to be swamped in a rice-shower!! (see blog-posts from August 2006 for photos!)

anyway, dinner is almost ready so I'm scootling!

God Bless

-x-

-

Parish crib, altar serves, holy innocents..

I have finally caved in and got blogger beta!
It seems to be pretty much the same as old blogger except the photo-uploading ability is a million times better! I had so many problems uploading photos on old blogger; I'd upload them and get a confirmation your-photos-have-been-uploaded message...but no pictures would appear in my blog post!

So I have decided to take advantage of my new hassel-free photo-uploading blog, and make a random photo post!!


Here are some close-up photos of my parish's nativity crib:

Mary, Joseph & baby Jesus

Ox

Shepherd boy.

We also have a pretty angel (which I didn't take a picture of) and 3 magnificent wise-men, but they don't come out till Ephiphany on Jan 6th.

On December 26th it was the feast day of the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen.
You can read his story in Acts 6:8-10; 7:54-59.
Basically he was stoned to death for being a follower of Christ.

St. Stephen is also the patron saint of altar servers and many parishes enroll their altar-servers as part of the Guild of St. Stephen, which is like a national group for altar-servers (may even be international, I'm not sure).
So on December 26th all the altar servers at my parish attend, and serve, at the St. Stephen's Day Mass.
Once someone has been serving consistently for 3 years they recieve the Guild Medal in bronze

In the centre the letters XP are the first two letters of the name 'Christ' in Greek.
At the top is the crown of victory given by God to everyone who overcomes evil, especially those who die for him.
At the bottom are the palm branches, traditional signs of martyrs who died for Christ.
Around the edge are the Latin words of the Guild motto:
CVI SERVIRE REGNARE EST.
TO SERVE CHRIST IS TO REIGN.

and after 10 years of altar-serving they get the same St. Stephen's medal but in shiny silver .

Chris has been altar-serving since he was 7 years old...that makes 17 YEARS of altar serving!! There isn't a gold altar serving medal, but if there was, he should get it!!

And my final picture in this my random post of random pictures...today is the feast day of the Holy Innocents:

The Holy Innocents were the children mentioned in Matthew 2:16-18. "When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more."

Poor children and their parents.

Unfortunatly this sad event is echoed again and again in today's "modern" world where billions of abortions on innocent unborn babies take place every day.

Just think 600 babies EVERY SINGLE DAY are aborted in England & Wales alone, and thousands a day more in America.

Today is a good day to pray for them, and for those people who choose the death of their unborn baby over the baby's life.

-x-x-x-x-

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Happy Christmas..

....from Antonia & Chris:

Hope you all had a wonderful day yesterday! We went to my parent's house and had a great time!
The tree was overflowing with presents (for once my brother & I had bought my parents more than one present each, so there were loads under the tree for everyone!):



Our stockings were full of yummy treats (here is my stocking; it was a present to me from a family freind when I was 2 years old)



My present to Chris was a pannier bag for his bike (oh ain't I romantic?!!)

It looked like this:

and it fixes onto the back of his bike.

I got it because the poor boy always gets semi-crippled trying to carry our weekly shopping back from the supermarket on his back. This should help spare his spine!

Here is Chris opening a present

Chris got me the skirt featured in these photos as well as a nice scarf-and-gloves set.
My parents got me and Chris a gorgeous HUGE lead-crystal photo-frame with a big picture of Chris & I from the wedding. I also got some clothes and other little things.
Our Priest friend gave me a gorgeous wood icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe!!

and then we of course had a huge scrumptious Christmas FEAST!
We had our priest friend over as well which was nice.
Here is me with the sausages-wrapped-in-bacon which I made:




But the most super duper part of the day...WE GOT POPE BENEDICT'S BLESSING!!
My parents get Vatican tv and so we watched the Pope's Christmas address to the world live, and then got his papal blessing!! (woohoo! Plenary Indulgence!!)

I took a video of him giving his blessing from the tv with my digital camera and was going to upload it to my blog, but it's a bit big so I might do it later.

We have now just got back from St. Stephen's Day Mass at Church and are going to do some tidying and sorting, and then may head over to my parent's house again!

I hope you all had a lovely wonderful blessed Christmas!

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Happy Christmas!!

For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.

– St. Irenaeus

Pope John Paul II in his address on Dec. 18, 2002 said,

"The liturgy of Advent…helps us to understand fully the value and meaning of the mystery of Christmas. It is not just about commemorating the historical event, which occurred some 2,000 years ago in a little village of Judea. Instead, it is necessary to understand that the whole of our life must be an ‘advent,’ a vigilant awaiting of the final coming of Christ. To predispose our mind to welcome the Lord who, as we say in the Creed, one day will come to judge the living and the dead, we must learn to recognize him as present in the events of daily life. Therefore, Advent is, so to speak, an intense training that directs us decisively toward him who already came, who will come, and who comes continuously."

Christmas time is coming...

It's Christmas eve; we've attended Sunday Mass, been to Confession, I've taken out "The Interior Castle" by St. Theresa of Avila as my spiritual Christmas reading and all Christmas presents have been bought (after spending some 5 hours shopping around for 'the best deal'; '3 for 2' discounts, 'but one get one half price' etc, we have managed to get all family members on both sides of the family a nice present!) some presents still need to be wrapped, others still need to be assembled...but at least we have them!


I had a bit of a humbling moment just now which reminded about the importance of not jumping to conclusions about others.

I was cycling along when I saw someone selling brightly coloured modern art paintings on the side of the road. At a quick glance as I cycled past I could see the common theme in almost all of the paintings was a pig on a cross and some weird human-like figure with a hat standing near-by.

I carried on cycling but couldn't stop thinking about what they might mean...is the artist trying to insult Jesus? Calling him a pig on the cross? How horrible & terrible!

I was quite upset and so in the end I couldn't just do and say nothing.....so in my typical Antonia-way, I went back!

Ready to defend Christ and stick up for Him against anyone who thinks a painting of a pig on a cross is funny, I went to the artist and asked (as sweetly as possible): "I don't really understand your paintings...I was wondering if you could explain them to me...."


Well, basically it turns out that the artist has bipolar affective disorder (also know as manic depression) and has streaks of schizophrenia-like symptoms too. The paintings are meant to the about him and his mental illness.

He is the pig, the cross signifies his illness, the weird man in the hat is his psychiatrist, and the paintings were all about the effect that bipolar depresion has had on his life.

At the end he said something like "I'm living on the poverty-line because of this illness. *sigh* Oh well, at least it keeps me humble."

Which really touched my heart. He then wished me a Merry Christmas and said "God Bless You!" which people rarely say anymore.


anyway, while I still don't think drawing a pig on a cross is totally appropriate....this episode has reminded me about the importance of not leaping to conclusions based on superficial assessment of people.



-

reminder to self...

Fight all error, but do it with good humor, patience, kindness, and
love. Harshness will damage your own soul and spoil the best cause.

– St. John Cantius



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woohoo!

Me, at a friend's Christmas dinner the other day. (Does the exhaustion show?!)


Yahoooooooooo!!!

I HAVE FINISHED FOR 2 GLORIOUS WEEKS OF HOLIDAY! YEEEEYYY!!


I somehow managed to drag myself in to every single lecture from 9am - 5pm every day this week (as opposed to some 50% of my year group who just didn't bother turning up! pffff!)

and now I am utterly exhausted but looking forward to getting some serious sleeping done during the next two weeks (...but not tomorrow because I have rowing and major Christmas shopping to do...and not on Sunday because we have to get up early to go to Mass...and not on Monday because that is Christmas and we have to get up early to go to Mass)....I'll sleep at some point!

A festive skeleton in our Medical School library (he has mistletoe between his teeth in case it's not clear what that green stuff is!)!

As well as it being my last week of term, another great thing about this week was that my parish Church has put all their daily Masses to the evening so that lots of people can go after work (usually only 2 daily Masses per week are in the evening, the rest of then are in the morning).

I am so thankful our Priest has done this because it's been SUCH a blessing to participate in Mass and follow the liturgy and readings as we lead up to Christmas!

This week the Gospel readings have been on the annunciation, where Angel Gabriel comes to Mary and tells her she will conceive a son, and then we had the Angel appearing to Joseph in a dream telling him not to divorce pregnant Mary, and then about the Angel appearing to Zachariah in the temple and telling him that Elizabeth will conceive a baby (John the Baptist), and then Mary & Joseph's visit to Elizabeth, when sweet baby John leaps for joy in Elizabeth's womb when unborn baby Jesus is near!
and today we had Mary's Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) and a wonderful meditation from our Priest on the humility and beauty of Mary.

and then after daily Mass this week we've also been able to go to our usual Rosary-with-Eucharistic-adoration prayer group, which has also been such a source of grace.

I feel so excited about Jesus's birth, and, thanks to the Mass and liturgy, like I am approaching it with Mary & St. Joseph & the rest of the Church.

Isn't being Catholic like, THE BESTEST THING IN THE WORLD?!!

I will def be posting before Monday, but in case you don't check out my blog before then, I hope you have a very special, happy and blessed Christmas!

Don't forget about the reason for all the celebrations!

God Bless

-x-x-x-x-

Luke 1:46-55:

My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
For He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden,
For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name. And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with His arm:
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and exalted those of low degree.
He has filled the hungry with good things;
and the rich He has sent empty away.
He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy;
As He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to His posterity forever.

-

Feminists for Life

Feminists for Life have published a series of really good Pro-Woman Answers to Pro-Choice Questions.

These are the arguments that are always always always brought up by those who are pro-abortion.....what if the baby is disabled, what if the baby has a horrible life and is abused by parents who dont want it, what about rape...etc... and so it's pretty useful to have a good snappy sensible reply back.

Click Here to Read the Q&As

Here is a list of the questions that are answered:

Can you really be a feminist and pro-life?
What about rape? What if it was your daughter who was raped?
What about “the life of the mother”?
What if her partner, friends or family have abandoned her? Or what if she is poor?
What if she just doesn’t want it?
If you don't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?
So you believe that a tiny speck—a zygote, blastocyst, embryo or fetus—has rights over a woman?
Isn't feminism about a woman having rights equal to those of a man?
What about all those kids in foster care that nobody wants?
Disability—what if the fetus is or could be disabled?


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Our Lady & The Rosary

CLICK HERE TO LEARN ABOUT THE ROSARY AND HOW TO PRAY IT


FROM SAINT MAXIMILLIAN KOLBE:

"Prayer is powerful beyond limits when we turn to the Immaculata who is queen even of God's heart."

FROM ST. LOUIS DE MONTFORT:

"If you say the Rosary faithfully until death, I do assure you that, in spite of the gravity of your sins 'you shall receive a never-fading crown of glory.' Even if you are on the brink of damnation, even if you have one foot in hell, even if you have sold your soul to the devil as sorcerers do who practise black magic, and even if you are a heretic as obstinate as a devil, sooner or later you will be converted and will amend your life and will save your soul, if-- and mark well what I say-- if you say the Holy Rosary devoutly every day until death for the purpose of knowing the truth and obtaining contrition and pardon for your sins."

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Words from the Little Flower

To a sister who had told her that she preferred to be corrected when she was wrong rather than when she was blameless, Therese replied: "I prefer to be accused unjustly, for then I have nothing to reproach myself with, and joyfully offer this to the good Lord. Then I humble myself at the thought that I am indeed capable of doing the thing of which I have been accused."

And another time she says: "Why should we defend ourselves when we are misunderstood and misjudged? Let us leave that aside. Let us not say anything. It is so sweet to let others judge us in any way they like. O blessed silence, which gives so much peace to the soul!"



This is a virtue I am sorely lacking in

sweet Therese, pray for us, that we may have a heart that burned with love for Christ as yours did


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Our sweet beautiful Vigrin Queen

This video is beautiful and a great meditation on our sweet Virgin Mary. It really fills your heart love for her, whose generosity we especially remember at this time of year as she said 'Yes' to God, for our salvation.

On the cross Jesus gave her to us as our mother; she is the kindest, the most loving of all mothers and let us humbly turn to her for all our needs.

Oh most precious Virgin Queen, blessed are you among women, pray for us

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So much to say...such little time to blog...

ONE WEEK! ONLY ONE WEEK TILL MY HOLIDAYS START! AND I CAN'T WAIT!!

This is the longest academic term I've ever had without a holiday; we started on August 20th, and will finish on Decemeber 22nd! and I haven't taken off a single day! I'm starting to feel the tiredness now...it's geting just that extra bit more difficult to tumble out of bed in the morning.
Also, I worked out that I haven't actually sat in a car or a bus since I've been married! I've been cycling around everywhere! no wonder my legs ache!

Unfortunatly for me I have an exam this Monday (8:45am GMT...if anyone wants to pray!) and so I can't quite give up on the academic work yet and wait for the hols to roll round. My exam is on Neurology, Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Elderly medicine...and so there is quite a LARGE volume of stuff to learn, and it's a case of you-can-never-know-it-well-enough-so-quit-surfing-blogs-and-revise!!

And oh! I have so much I'd like to blog about!

I have a post in-the-making about the doctrine of double effect and how that applies to condom use in monogamous-married-AIDS-sufferers, and then of course my massive theological 'contraception-why not?' post which is basically written, but is so long that not even I can stomach reading it! and then so many thoughts on Christmas, and how Jesus is about to be born, oh the joy!! and how Mary and Joseph must've been feeling; their humility and rock-like faith in God's help!
Chris & I still don't have anywhere to live (we are getting kicked out of this current house in a months time because the land-lady wants to sell it) and I am already starting to get a bit stressed out! (well, my stressed-out levels for lack of housing are currently being surpassed by my stressed-out levels for my exam on Monday)....but I can't imagine how Mary & Joseph must've felt...Mary being HOURS away from giving birth, away from home, in a bustling busy loud town with nowhere to live.
and then they had to go into a CAVE with animals and the Creator and Saviour of Mankind was born in such poverty.

That reminds me a bit of a thought I had during today's Gospel Luke 3:10-18, when John the Baptist is taking about Jesus:

John answered them all, saying, “I am baptizing you with water,but one mightier than I is coming.I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals..."

and then if you remember how shocked John was some time later when Jesus asked that John baptise him with water, but John replied that he wasn't worthy.

Now this is John, who had lept in his mother Elizabeth's womb when unborn-Jesus was near, and this is John who had spent his ENTIRE life, every second, preparing the way for Jesus. He was one holy holy holy holy holy guy.
and he say that he's not even worthy to lie in the dirt and undo one STRAP of Jesus's sandal.

and we get to recieve Jesus into our MOUTH and into our body every time we go to Mass!

My word, what an incomprehensible privilege! How *much* Jesus must love us to offer Himself to us in such a real and tangible way...avaliable for us whenever we want!!

and John wasn't worthy to undo the strap of his sandal, how much less worthy are we to recieve Jesus?! Yet He wants us to recieve Him and He wants to be close to us!
Wow! What boundless humility.

So let's try extra hard to make sure our souls and bodies are a worthy place for this Humble King, and let's imitate Him in humility.


Oh, also during today's Mass, our Priest made such a lovely comment about the second reading where St. Paul says (Phil 4:4-7)

Brothers and sisters: Rejoice in the Lord always.I shall say it again: rejoice! Your kindness should be known to all.The Lord is near.Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.

The rejoice part is so wonderful; we have to live with a deep rooted joy in our hearts, a joy that is based on an unchangeable truth of Christ's love for us, that is more important than anything else.

Our Priest also said that the word that St. Paul uses 'thanksgiving' is actually from the word 'Eucharistia'....or rather Eucharist as we call it now.
So St. Paul is actually telling people that if there is anything they need they should pray about it and go to Mass to make their prayers known to God!

Because God is there at Mass!! Jesus IS the Eucharist!!


anyway, my dinner is ready (thanks Chris! Such a sweet-heart..making me dinner while I am 'working'..coughs..!)

Just wanted to leave with this final comment from Mr. Smith...he wrote a great post on the simplicity of children and has a wonderful story to share about a conversation he had with a little girl!




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Go to Jesus. He loves you and is waiting for you to give you many
graces. He is on the altar surrounded by angels adoring and praying. Let them make some room for you and join them in doing what they do.

– St. Mary Joseph Rossello

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nice rosary story I found

I don't know if this is true...but it might be!

----------

In the last century there was much hope placed in science and much faith in material progress. During that time, in the compartment of a train in France, an old man was one day praying his Rosary.

At one stop a young intellectual entered the compartment and sat down. After a while, not able to stand it any more, this student of modern science said to the old man, "Why do you pray the Rosary? Why do you pray? There is no God. Only science. Yes, science is the answer."

The old man remained silent.

The youth not wanting to hurt him said, "Well, my friend, you mean no harm. You must lack education. Give me your address. I’ll send you some books to enlighten you. Yes, they will teach you that science and not prayer is the answer."

Just at that moment it was the old man’s stop. Before leaving the compartment he reached into his coat pocket and took out his business card. He gave it to the intellectual who bid him, "Good day."

When the train started again the young man looked at the card.

It read:
Louis Pasteur
Institute of Scientific Research
Paris


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Gospel Meditation

Matthew 11:16-19

Jesus said to the crowds: To what shall I compare this generation? It is like children who sit in the marketplaces and call to one another, We played the flute for you, but you did not dance, we sang a dirge, but you did not mourn; For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, He is possessed by a demon; The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said. ;Look he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners; But wisdom is vindicated by her works.

Today's Gosepl really struck me, because it was like a mirror of my own attitude

In this Gospel, Christ's heart is wounded by perverse human nature, as both John, his
precursor, and Christ himself are rejected by many of those whom he came to save. And they are rejected for exactly the opposite reasons. We see clearly displayed that all-too-human tendency to justify our own behavior by seeing sin in other's when there is only virtue.


Pope Saint Gregory the Great describes it this way:
When they find something which is quite obviously good, they pry into it to see if there is not also some badness hidden in it (Moralia, 6,22)

This Gospel reveals the most dramatic of realities: We are free to reject Christ. All that is necessary to do so is to give in to our fallen human nature


(nb: this meditation above is from Regnum Christi's daily Gospel meditation which you can sign up to on the right hand side of their site)

Christian cheerfulness is not something physiological. Its foundation is supernatural, and goes deeper than illness or difficulties.Cheerfulness does not mean the jingling of bells, or the gaiety of a dance at the local hall.True cheerfulness is something deeper, something within: something that keeps us peaceful and brimming over with joy, though at times our face may be stern.

– St. Josemaria Escriva, The Forge, #520

Science & Religion

Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can
purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.

Pope John Paul II (1920 - 2005AD)

"For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven..."

This is an interesting article by a religion teacher at a Catholic high-school in New York.

He says:

We recently tackled abortion.
A few students tried to make abortion a feminist issue, but interestingly, only a very few...A few others defended abortion as a necessary means of birth control or even population control. But the most prominent line of thinking by far was, well, not thinking.

In my personal experience of University students, this is also so so so true.

Most people are "pro-choice" simply because they haven't actually thought about it.
Abortion is legal, society is mostly pro-choice...so teens and young adults just assimilate that and take the because-it's-legal-it-must-be-right stance.

They don't actually THINK about it.

It is honestly rare to find a young person who says, "Okay, so a fetus at 10 weeks old has a beating heart, it is growing, it is alive, it is a separate person from its mother...but I still think it's okay to kill it."

at least not in my experience.

{Interestingly most doctors however DO have that stance, because they know that abortion involves the killing of a life...they just don' think the life is important. ]


These interactions from the article are between the teacher and students and I think they are a great reflection of how lots of young people think:

Steve: It’s not like we’re talking about a living person here.
Me: What do you mean?
Steve: Well, the heart doesn’t even start
beating until it’s like five months along.
Me: Five months?
Steve: Sure.
Me: Actually, it’s more like three weeks.
Steve: No way. That’s not true.


Now, every one of these
college-bound juniors covered fetal development in ninth-grade biology. Consider
another student’s assertion.

Craig: Until it [the unborn baby]
comes out, it’s not alive. It’s dead.
Me: Dead?
Craig: Yeah.
Me: And what do you base that statement on?
Craig: Science.

If charity suggested I chalk all this up to (profound) ignorance and
misinformation, Samantha left no doubt about what lay beneath them. In the midst
of yet another discussion of basic fetology, this honor student spoke up.

Samantha: Yes, but what science says doesn’t matter.
Me:
(silent, unsure of an appropriate response to such an assertion)
Samantha: Just because something is true doesn’t mean you have to
believe it.
Me: Okay. (I write her last sentence on the board so it’s plain
as day.) Are you sure that’s the argument you want to make to defend a right to
abortion?
Samantha: Sure. I can go through my life denying what
science says is true. I have that right.
Me: Yes, I guess you can. I can
refuse to believe, for example, that the world is round. I can insist it’s flat.
Samantha: Exactly.
Me: But can that kind of thinking ever
become the foundation of our laws, even if some unreasonable folks want to base
their personal decisions on it? If we do, laws just become a matter of who has
the power, not what’s right and true. Laws would simply be what the lawmaker
wants them to be, for his own convenience. If the ones making the law want to
say wife-beating is okay, then that’s the law; it doesn’t matter if it’s “true”
that women are people and have rights. Or Hitler can have his concentration
camps. Or America can have black slaves. And there’s nothing anyone can do about
it, because (the lawmaker says) just because something is true doesn’t mean I
have to believe it.

Samantha shrugged.

These are not the only
instances of my students’ rejection of rational thought or willful denial of
plain reality. When I responded to one girl’s objection that we can’t make laws
based on morality by pointing out that we criminalize rape and murder and
stealing for moral reasons, she told me, “Yes, but those are different. In
those cases, you’re hurting someone else.”

The great thing about young people is that they still have that glimmer of childhood innocence in them, that streak of God's law written in all human hearts hasn't be fully adulterated by the lies and self-seeking of the world.

Oh sure, it can be twisted by society, but I think it can be more easily appealed to when presented with the Truth.

When presented with the facts, lots of older adults, blinded by their own 'ego' (as Freud would say), can deny truth as being true, or dismiss its importance.

They hearts are a lot more corrupted with sin.

But I think there are few children who wouldn't be moved if you showed them a preganant lady's tummy and said that some people think it is okay to kill the baby inside.
They'd be horrified that anyone would do such a thing!


But an adult...well, they'd shrug it off, explain it away, numb that little whispering voice...and then eventually grow so cold, that they are literally spiritually blind

(*takes a look at English society* abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, contraception, homosexual marriages, IVF, surrogate motherhood, sperm donation, egg donation, wife-abuse...)

anyway, this little article just made me think about the beauty and simplicity of children and made me reflect some more about on the child-like characteristics Jesus was referring to in Matt19:14 "Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."


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Haven't you noticed how people in love dress to please one another by their appearance? Well that is how you should fit out and deck your soul.

- St. Josemaria Escriva, Furrow, #667


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Miss Potter

Chris & I went to see the film "Miss Potter" this evening.
( I got free tickets.)

(As you may have gathered from my other posts, we are too poor to afford treats, so most of our excitment is thanks to free vouchers we gather from newspapers or the internet!)

The film is based on Beatrix Potter ; the lady who wrote all the sweet 'Peter Rabbit' books.

It was a really pretty and cute film; lots of beautiful English countryside, animals, pictures, children, stories...all in all, quite a delightful watch!

Yey! For ONCE a refreshing wholesome film at the cinema; no sex-before-marriage, no promiscuity, no adultary, no divorce, no swearing, no semi-naked girls, no derogatory talk about sex, no vulgarity...basically, I would let small children watch it and they would enjoy it (well, little girls probably would...depends on the personality of the little boy!)

It has Renee Zellweger in and she was a darling actress (SO much better than she was in that trash Bridget Jones Diary. I saw Bridget Jones Diary2 because all my friends wanted to see it after our exams a few years ago; it was SO GROSS. I had to close my eyes for most of it because it was so vulgar and I couldn't stomach seeing such yuckiness. So I am glad to report that her behaviour is altogether more moral in this film!)


-

not all kids love Santa!

A bunch of photos of little kiddies terrified of Santa!
awww!












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and now for something completely different...

On Friday it was the "Physics Lab Christmas Party" where my darling husband is doing his PhD.
A whole evening with a bunch of people who do physics...yes, I know what you're thinking....!!

But it was a lot of fun! These are all guys who do physics with explosives so they're really all big boys who like playing with things that go bang!

(and no, not explosives in the atomic-bomb sense, but in the exploding-rocks-for-mining and the like.)


It is a tradition that every year at the Christmas party the PhD students put together a 20 minute video for everyone's amusement, and this year it was SO funny! Lots of it was funny sketches and and play-on from tv-shows and movies, but it was really well done (Chris was actually in charge of the script-writing this year!). They even managed to get a video of one their Professor's ASLEEP at his desk!


A running theme they had throughout the video was destroying Lego Men in various nerdy phsyicsy ways. After every couple of skits they showed Lego Men being exploded, crushed, shot with the super big rock-shooting gun, melted etc!

It was really well done though because all the equipment they used is proper equipment which they use to do their PhD experiments, and so it's attached to super high-speed cameras which caputure about 200,000 frames a second!
So they showed the videos in slow motion, with very dramatic music, and you could see exactly how the little Lego man was being deformed, and the exact way in which his body exploded, squashed, melted etc!

It was very funny though!

The picture above is a little taste!


On an unrelated note...it's almost Christmas and people are bringing out their "fantastic" house decorations! (...not!)

I think it's pretty see maybe a fir tree in the garden covered with some cute twinkling fairy-lights, a wreath on the door....but possibly not:

I'm not joking either! The houses *do* actually look like this!

I remember when this started a few years ago, it was one or two houses, but now I can think of at least 6 houses or so along my 5 minute cycle-ride from the Church to my house which are covered with stuff!
One house even has an enormous enflatable and glowing polar bear at least 7 feet tall in the front garden!

I tried to add more impressive house photos but blogger won't let me, so if you are bored you can always go to www.uglychristmaslights.com for many many many more!

God Bless

-x-

~Immaculate Conception~

Today is the feast of the Immaculate Conception, which is the feast day where we celebrate the fact that Mary, Jesus' mother, was conceived without sin.

Just two points that sometimes people get confused about ( I know it took me a good few years to get them clear in my mind!):


1. This is not the same as the feast of the Annunciation, in which we celebrate the conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit (also known by some as the Virgin Birth).

The Immaculate Conception is where we celebrate the fact that Mary herself was conceived without any original sin.

2. This doesn't mean that Mary's conception is the same as Jesus's!

Jesus is human AND God, and was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

Mary is only human and was conceived in the natural way.

All men and women, being children of Adam & Eve, inherit 'original sin' -- that is, we have the taint of sin on our soul because of Adam & Eve's disobedience, and fall from grace.

At our baptism, that stain of original sin on our soul is taken away.
The only reason this is possible is because of Jesus's death and defeat over sin.

Well, in Mary's case she didn't need to be baptised to be freed from original sin.

The redemptive power from Jesus's death stretched 'back in time' and saved her from original sin from the very moment of her conception.

It is important not to forget that Jesus came to save ALL men, and the saving power of His death is not just for the people that would come after Him in history!


So Mary is fully human, but was without the stain of original from first moment of her existance. Because her soul was never subject to the corrupting effects that original sin has on us, she never committed any sins during her whole life.

Her will was beautifully in tune with God's

But note: that is different to how Jesus was sinless.

Jesus was sinless because He was God.
Mary was sinless because she was never exposed to the soul-corrupting effects of sin.



There are a couple of Bible passages for why the Catholic Church teaches that Mary was conceived without original sin, but for me the most special is where the Arcangel Gabriel comes to Mary and says:

"Hail Full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee..."


The term "full of grace" that is used to describe Mary is very important.

"Grace" was exactly the thing that Adam & Eve lost in the Garden of Eden, so the fact that Mary is described as being "full of grace" shows that her soul is unique from other men's; she has an abundance of grace, which men don't have.

That is because original sin was never on her soul. Her soul was always pure and sinless, and rightly so.


(note it is a teeny bit more complicated than how I have explained it because there are different types of grace and stuff. But I think this is the essence.)
This is how I have read it and been explained it.
However I am no theologian so if I've made any errors please please please someone correct me!

you can read more here

~Oh Beautiful Mary Conceived Without Sin, Pray For Us Who Have Recourse To Thee~

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Contracepting Christians...

So today the CMF (Christian Medical Fellowship) in my university held a discussion group on "contraception".

I have been excited (& scared) about this talk all term; an opportunity to discuss the amazing beauty of sexual relations with fellow Christians, and perhaps shed some light on why the Church teaches that contraception is so damaging to sexual relations! (or at least that's what I thought...)

I know that for Evangelicals/low Anglicans (who CMF is almost entirely composed of) quoting Catholic Church documents or 2000 years of Saints saying that contraception is wrong doesn't really persuade them (even though some of these Saints were around before the Bible was!!)

So last night I stayed up till midnight preparing myself 5 PAGES of Bible quotes all about sex, the beauty and purpose of sex, the meaning of sex, what God thinks of sex, Onan, the comparison of sexual relations to Christ & the Church etc....and ergo, how contraception is incompatable with God's view on sex.

I even threw in quotes from Calvin, Luther and Wesley (Protestant reformers) ALL of whom thought that contraception was a horrific evil.

(not a lot of Protestant know that these guys who started their denominations all thought contraception was wrong wrong wrong.)

I wanted to make sure I knew all my stuff so that the Holy Spirit could work in me to cover any argument with a relevant Bible verse!

This morning I went to super-early-Mass before lectures and at the end was talking to some of my lovely friends about this discussion group later in the afternoon.

I said to them "Well, at least it's a GOOD sign that the Evangelicals want to talk about contraception in a series of ethics lectures. It shows that they recognise that there's something not entirely wholesome about it...."


How wrong I was.

The hour of contraception discussion was not actually about whether contraception itself was wrong.....it was all about whether it is right to prescribe it to people who aren't married, or whether there is any difference morally between the pill and the coil...

But they just assumed that contraception itself was fine and good and there was no problem with it!!

what?!!


I didn't prepare 5 pages of Bible quotes for nothing!

so I made sure at the beginning to say something like 'But surely we must consider whether contraception in itself is a good thing, before we can consider the circumstances in which it might be right to give it out!"

I did get my chance to say my bit about the difference between NFP and contraception, and the fact that every sexual act has two purposes (unitive + procreative), and it's not authentic to artificially seperate the two.
I also mentioned the fact that the sexual act is inherently ordered to procreation, and that the Bible tells us procreation is a very good thing means you can't justifiably distort it and change the actual essence of the act.

I then waffled on some more; they didn't really have anything much to say in response other than rather odd things like "But God gave us our intelligence, and if we use our intelligence to make chemicals to stop fertility then God must be happy with that..."

I was like "....errr......atomic bomb anyone?!.....just because we can do something, doesn't automatically mean it's right or good!"

She then said "But in about 40 years time we will need 3 PLANETS the size of Earth to fit the population of the world if it continues to grow at the rate it is!"(Yes! She did say that! and she is a GP?!)


That's a ridiculous thing to say because

a- it's not true; the planet has huge amounts of space left for living on. We are certainly not running out of space.

b- even IF the planet were running out of space, that doesn't mean that it would be okay to use contraception! That's a very consequentialist/utilitarian thing to say.....you can't just justify an action based on what you hope to achieve by it.

I couldn't just kill my elderly rich Aunt in order to use her money to feed starving children.

You have to look at the essence of the action itself.

So just because contraception would drop birth-rates doesn't automatically mean contraception is good!

You have to look at the morality of contraception itself, and what contraception does to sex before you can say if it is right or wrong.

So I brought up NFP, and she had no clue about it and said it didn't work. I tried to quote my studies but she just shoo-ed them off.
I wish I'd remmebered to say that Mother Theresa got a Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the poor in Calcutta, and her NFP programme in India prevented 1.1 million births.


anyway, we only spent about 15mins discussing whether contraception in itself was good or not, then one of the girl's said something like "well, we are actually here to discuss under what circumstances we'd give it to our patients, and not whether it is right or not."

So that put an end to that and we spent the rest of the time reading little vignettes about 15 year old girls who want to go on the pill, and what type of pill or injections we should put them on!

blah!

I did manage to get a few points in about how it seemed to me that a Christian doctor who believed that sex outside of marriage was wrong but still gave out contraception to unmarried women, was like someone in Jerusalem 2000 years ago handing over a hammer to crucify Jesus.

( that kinda shocked them a bit, but I stuck by it and I think they were all quite moved by that analogy by the end! )


But all in all it was as inconsistent and semi-frustrating as the last talk on IVF that I went to with them.

They each believe whatever they wish, their truth is made up according to their own opinion, they twist and change Bible verses to mean whatever it is most convenient for them to mean....and they think that it makes sense to be like that!


A lovely Franciscan priest friend once said to me that most of the time God uses us to complete His will despite our utter failings and inability to do His will perfectly.
So although I don't think I spoke very well today, I hope that the Holy Spirit planted a few tiny seeds, and at least some of them will see the beauty & authenticity of the teachings of the Catholic Church in relation to sexuality.
(and consequently live it, and then see that the rest of the Church's teachings make total sense too!)


-

Contraception vs. Natural Family Planning...

...what's the moral difference?

He relates, "I started with an analogy. Let us say that you and your fiance are making up a wedding invitation list. There are certain acquaintances of yours that you are not going to invite (obviously you cannot invite everyone you know). There are two things you can do.
The first is the traditional approach: simply do not send these people invitations.
The second approach is not at all conventional but would nonetheless achieve the same effect: send out notices telling them not to come, that their presence at the wedding is undesired."

"Now, put yourself in the shoes of an acquaintence who receives a note telling her not to come to the wedding:"Dear Jan Doe, Tom and I are getting married next month and we want you to know that you are not invited to the wedding. We don't want you, so please don't come."

Would you feel differently receiving such a note as opposed to simply not receiving an invitation?

"People always acknowledge that apart from its unusualness, they would indeed feel differently in getting a "disinvitation." In fact, they admit that they'd feel insulted, whereas not getting an invitation would leave them, at the most, only disappointed.

There is clearly a pretty important moral and psychological difference between these two techniques for achieving the same end..."

"To tie the analogy in with NFP and contraception, I suggested the NFP couple that does not want a child just then, simply does not send out an invitation for a child; that is, they refrain from sexual intercourse, which is an act whose very nature is ordinated to the invitation or invocation of new life. The contracepting couple, on the other hand, by using a contraceptive is sending the message that a new life is undesired."


"Now, enlisting the power of your imagination, put yourself in the osition of the Creator. The abstaining couple who is practicing NFP is acting in such a way that they are not calling upon God's creative act at that time. We cannot imagine God being insulted or dishonored here. The couple is simply not performing an action whose nature is ordained to elicit God's creative act. God is still present, still respected, but no invitation is sent to Him that would invoke His presence in the specific form of His being a Creator of new life. Contrariwise, the contracepting couple, by using contraception, is sending an explicit message to God that His creative presence is not desired. Because He receives a "disinvitation" in the form of a contraceptive signal, we might easily imagine that He would be insulted."

-

There is a HUGE difference between sterilizing something fruitful, and not doing the fruitful thing at all.

-

Today: St. Nicholas of Myra (4th century AD)

Nicholas was a priest, an abbot, and a bishop of Myra. Once, he helped a poor family by dropping bags of gold coins in a window, landing in a stocking hung up to dry. Thus, the story of Santa Claus was born. He was known for his holiness, zeal, and astonishing miracles–even raising people from the dead.

Today, December 6th, is the feast day of St. Nicholas, the Saint on whom the commercialised 'Santa' figure is based.



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Daily Mass Readings

You can now downloads podcasts of daily Mass readings a month at a time from the U.S. bishops'site.

I think that's so great! So if you're unable to get to daily Mass you can listen to the Mass readings for the day while you're travelling on the bus, driving, vacuuming or whatever!

I wish I had an ipod!

CLICK HERE

Procrastination? Moi?!

Chris sent me this amusing comic strip which is very fitting, given this is my 4th post on here today...!
(to be fair though, I did read 60 pages of orthopaedics in between!)

(click on it to make it bigger)

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Catholic Monks

This video is 15 minutes long and I really enjoyed it.

A non-Catholic spends 24hrs with some 'Transalpine Redemptorists' monks (/hermits) who are living on a remote isolated island off the coast of Scotland.
They only celebrate the Tridentine Mass and all prayers are in Latin & they lead a very disciplined rigorous life (they get up at 3:15am for Mass at 3:45am, and then spend 3 hours in prayer before breakfast!) The rest of the day is spent doing pretty hard manual labour, and praying the Divine Office.


If you enjoyed the recent tv shows of 'The Monastary' or that one where the girls spend 6 weeks with the nuns (I've forgotten the name), then you will enjoy this! It is similar, but just a mini version of it (as I said, it lasts about 15mins)

Oh and the staunch athiest who goes to spend the day with them is so deeply moved that by the end he is crying, and you can tell he has had a real encounter with Christ's love.



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WOW + AIDS rant

WOW!

This BBC interview with our Cardinal is really good!

You *have* to read it! Condoms, Aids, priestly celibacy, he laid some Catholic smack-down (as Chris said!)



GOD BLESS HIM!

--

You wanna know what I think is ridiculous?! I think it is ridiculous when people try to say that the Catholic Church's stance on condoms is causing the AIDS epidemic to increase.

People who say that just want a someone to blame for the fact that their 'solution' of throwing condoms every-where is clearly not working.

AIDS is increasing everywhere, despite condoms being everywhere.
And people (e.g. Tony Blair) don't want to admit it and so look for anyone to blame. and as usual, the Church gets it!

(just like the rate of teenage pregnancies increasing everywhere in the UK, despite the fact that there is so much contraception in schools).

The MAJOR way in which AIDS is spread throughtout Africa (& the world) is via huge huge amounts of sexual promiscuity.

These people CLEARLY aren't listen to the Catholic Church's teaching on not having sex outside of marriage, so why on earth would they be listening to the Church's teaching on not using condoms?!!

The Church's teaching on condoms has nothing to do with it, because such people don't listen to the Church ANYWAY!!!

If people listened to the Church in the first place, and treated sex with the reverence and dignity with which it deserves to be treated (in marriage between husbands & wives) there would be no AIDS epidemic at all!


I would say that it is exceptionally rare for people to have AIDS if they are in a strictly monogomous marital relationship, where neither husband nor wife have ever had sex with anyone except their spouse.
(that situation is rare even amongst practicing Christians today, imagine in the world at large).

and even IF one of the spouses had AIDS and the other didn't, then surely if they truely loved their spouse and didn't want to risk transmitting the virus, they would do the safest thing....which is abstaining from sex altogether.

If condoms have a failure rate for pregnancy, meaning a sperm can get out, then their faliure rate for the AIDS virus, which is like a gajillion times smaller than a huge sperm (we're talking like an ant compared to a whale), must be even bigger.

The SAFEST option, if you have AIDS and don't want to risk give your spouse AIDS, is not to have sex at all. Then you can be 100% certain they won't catch it.


Promiting behaviour change is the ONLY thing that will have any effect.

And saying stuff like "Get real! People aren't like that" is loser-talk!
You can't just assume that humans are like animals with no willpower or ability to change! We are ALL capable of better!

and anyway, you can't just change moral laws because people are too sinful to follow them!

PEOPLE need to change to do what it right by God; we can't just change what is right to suit people!!


-

I LOVE JESUS...

...AND HE LOVES ME TOO!

see that picture up there? That's how much He loves you!!

-

Guild of Catholic Doctors

Today I went to the 'Celebrating Life' talk organised by the Guild of Catholic Doctors.
It was a lovely and interesting day, and I also had the great pleasure of meeting the wonderful (& "edifying" !!) Joee Blogs and his friend Andrew (whose photos and antics have featured in a number of Joee's posts!)
It was a blessing to meet them both!


The central theme of the day was the incomparable sanctity & dignity of human life no matter what stage of development it's at.
God created man in his own image and likeness, with a body and soul for the pure and simple reason that He WANTED us to exist and to spend eternity in Heaven with Him!


So that means that every single human life, from embryo, to elderly, no matter what the physical disability, or 'usefulness', productivity, capacity to speak or comprehend, every single human is of infite worth and dignity and is more precious and valuble than every animal or material object in the whole history of creation.


THAT is pretty wow!

and God loves each and every single one of us SO MUCH that He would literally give up everything He has, His very life, for us to be with Him in Heaven!

Ahhh!

Now THAT, my friends, is True Love!


So the talks of the day flowed from that fundamental fact of the intrinsic value and dignity of every human life, and how certain medical procedures, such as abortion, euthanasia, contraception etc, undermine and insult the dignity that every human person possesses.

God doesn't treat us as object, and we shouldn't treat other humans as objects, simply because it's 'convenient'

For example...

- aborting unborn babies (even if they have an illness or if they were created due to a rape. They are innocent and killing them can never be right).

- creating human life in a dish as in IVF

- starving the terminally ill or administering lethal drugs to kill them off

- using the pill (or any form of contraception) which prevents a husband & wife from the total giving of themselves to the other in imitation of Christ giving Himself to the Church.
(the pill, the coil, and injectable contraceptives also kill embryos).

(I also learned the interesting fact that women have a higher mortality in the year following an abortion, than similar woman who have had a normal birth or a miscarriage in stead).

The main speaker (a Dr. Philip Howard) gave an outstanding talk based on Evangelium Vitae, perhaps it will be online, but if not you can always read the encyclical itself online.

[I have decided that one day I am going to make a list of every encyclical and work my way through them all! They are so rich and beautiful! ]

So anyway, I had a lovely day!

It was really strengthening and refreshing to be amongst many other Catholic doctors, medical students and Priests who all love Jesus, and support His Church's teaching on the beauty and dignity of human life, and what that means in terms of morally good medicine.

One doctor said he's been a doctor for 30 years and has never prescribed the pill once! :-)

As Joee said this afternoon when speaking about the importance of having friendships which are life-giving with people who support you in your faith and will help you to grow in holiness (& not drag you into sin):

"Imagine lots of hot hot coals in a fire burning away; if one of the coals is removed from the fire it will continue to glow hot but will eventually cool down. It needs to be put back into the fire with the other coals to remain glowing hot. This is like our friendships - we can be outside the Catholic sphere but eventually we need to go back to our Catholic friends or we'll laps in our Fatih."


Being with good holy people will help you to be good and holy too. If you mix a good apple with a bunch of rotten apples, the rotten apples will soon spread their rottenness to the good apple.

Clearly, I'm not saying to avoid "unholy people", but (even in my own little life-experience), having close friendships with people who help to encourage and nurture your relationship with God, is very helpful if you want to grow closer to Him!
These are life-giving friendships.


Coincidently, this is also what my 'quote of the day' from St. John Bosco is about today:


Fly from bad companions as from the bite of a poisonous snake. If you keep good companions, I can assure you that you will one day rejoice with the blessed in Heaven; whereas if you keep with those who are bad, you will become bad yourself, and you will be in danger of losing your soul.

– St. John Bosco


So anyway! I have strayed from the point! It was a wonderful afternoon and I am very happy to have gone.

~~~~

On an unrelated note....

in my last post I rambled a bit at the end about Chris & the '12 coins' puzzle he was trying to solve (for fun...!)

Well, he managed to solve it in the end!

(I'm not surprised; he's doing a PhD in Physics and so is off-the-chart clever, and he also rows twice a day....meaning he has an increadible amount of will-power and determination!)

(I am slow and give up very easily which is why I didn't even bother attempting to solve it!)

Anyway, my dad (who reads my blog )(....hi daddy!) emailed us some online answers he found for this puzzle so if you wanna read them here they are.

But just for the record, my clever husband solved it by himself!

(what a nerd!)

hehe!

random odd mixture of stuff

Helloo!

First of all, thank you all so much for your replies to my desperate post about medical electives! I posted it in a mildly stressed moment when I suddenly realised that *everyone* else in my Clinical School basically has something planned already (& some are even starting to get rejected from places because the popular hospitals are all getting booked up).

So thank you all for your really kind and helpful replies! You provided me with such a wonderful diversity of practical ideas and locations! I am definitly exploring them!

As with most things in my life, I have entrusted my elective location to St. Joseph's care.
In case you haven't realised...I THINK HE IS FANTASTIC!!

There is an old Catholic custom to attach to an image/statue of St. Joseph a note with one's petition written on. The note serves as a continual petition to St. Joseph, much like a candle lighted before a sacred image. It also makes concrete our confidence in St. Joseph.

In one of the Churches in my town there is a beautiful old stone statue of St. Joseph, and if you look carefully by his feet, you see about 20 tiny bits of paper that people have hidden behind his feet in the stone with their petitions on! My heart skipped a beat when I first saw it and it made me so happy to see the trust and confidence people have in St. Joseph!

So that is something I have done with my elective; and have attached a wee note to my picture of St. Joseph on my bedroom wall!

A few years ago I really really wanted to go work at a Catholic summer camp, during my summer holiday. I'm not sure why I wanted to so much, but I really really wanted to!
I spent (I kid you not) over a year and a half wasting hours and hours and hours of my time on the internet looking for a decent place to go to in America and in random other places round the world.

I found nothing.

So I decided to completely give up looking and abandon it all to St. Joseph.

Well, 3 months of continous prayer later on March 19th (..St. Joseph's feast day!) I was randomly surfing the internet for something totally un-related to a summer camp and what did I randomly come across...but a beautiful wonderful site for an amazing CATHOLIC summer camp in the USA!

The dates for it were perfect; I flew out the first day of my summer holiday, and came back 10 days before World Youth Day 2005, so I managed to go to WYD too!

(and the summer camp was brilliant! I worked with Catholics youths aged 14-19, the Camp was totally Catholic, we had daily Mass, rosary, adoration, weekly stations of the cross, reconcilliation, and it was 100% focused on Christ and His Church! AND I made some really great freinds!) (*waves* hi Maggie!)

Coincidence?

Personally, I don't think so! In my humble little experience, whenever I try to control anything through my own efforts it always totally fails, but whenever I let go control and rely on God's help (usually through a Saint's intercession (I'm not good enough to do it on my own!)), it all works out so much better than I thought!

So thank you all for your suggestions for electives! I am gonna give up my desperate search now, and explore your suggestions, pray more and see where God leads me!
As it is 2 months of my life, I want it to be of benefit for me spiritually as well as academically!



In other news...Chris & I went to a restaurant this evening (only because we had a buy-one-get-one-free voucher & my dad had given me some $$ as a present!) (oh, also tomorrow Chirs & I are 'celebrating' our 4 month wedding anniversary!! wow a whole 4 months...!)
(coincidently, we also started dating exactly 4 years ago; November 30th 2002! I was only 19 and Chris was 20!)

anyway, I can proudly say that in the restaurant I didn't recognise a single song that they were playing throughout the entire meal!

woohooo! I am totally out of touch with the trashy modern music!! Given the song's lyrics seem to be even worse than I remember from when I was "in touch" (like, when I was 17), I see this as being a step in the right direction of detaching myself from the worthless superficiality and hedonism of today's secular society!!

~~~

Finally, please please, in your charity don't forget to say a prayer for our sweet dearly beloved Holy Father these days while he is in Turkey. I know there are a couple of Novena prayers ciculating round the net for him,( e.g. see St. Peter's Helpers), but let's all try to say a Hail Mary to our beautiful Vigrin Queen, that she may protect and guide her Son's Vicar on earth especially now that he is in Turkey, (and some Turkish people really don't seem to like him much.)

God Bless,

-x-

ps--

Chris has spent all day working on some maths question that someone told him about.

The person who told him has to work it out as part of their degree, but Chris has spent almost all day trying to work this out...just for the fun of it..!


....in fact he is still next to me right now with a piece of paper still trying to work it out!!

...so if you happen to be a mathsy genius...please help him out!

You have 12 coins, 11 of them are the same weight, one is different, but you don't know if it is heavier or lighter.

You have a set of scales which you are allowed to use 3 times in order to discover which coin is the odd one out, and whether it is heavier or lighter than the rest.


(I have already given up trying to work it out!)

-

Pope Benedict:

"Speaking just to find applause or to tell people what they want to hear….is like prostitution," Pope Benedict told theologians "Don’t look for applause, but look to obey the truth."


wow!


~*HUGE SMILES*~
Seriously, how can you not love the Pope?!!

help with my medical elective!

In summer 2007 I have two months to spend doing any kind of medicine any where round the world.


and the problem is...I have no idea where I'd like to go or what I'd like to do!

I know it seems like a long way away but it's not really as I am competing for places with medical students from all over the world as most medical schools have their electives during the summer months. and loads of my friends already have placements.

In an ideal situation I'd like to work with Catholic doctors in a semi-poor, but safe, country where the locals speak English. I'd like to get a lot of hands-on experience and so learn a lot of clinical medicine.

But I can't seem to find anywhere.

I have asked St. Joseph's help, and I'm trying to be patient, but I just thought I'd put it out there on my blog in case anyone has any ideas of specific hospitals, religious orders or organisations that I could approach.

I may have to sacrifice one of my criteria (e.g. working in a Catholic context, as I really can't seem to find anything on that front).

So any help or ideas at all would be greatly appreciated!

Jesus in New-York

This is AMAZING! It really touched me!

It's has Fr. Benedict Groeschel & the voice of JP2!!

and best of all...JESUS!

WE LOVE YOU!

THE SIN OF ONAN (contraception)

I found an exceedingly interesting article the other day on "the sin of Onan".

This article was so interesting because it is even MORE Bible evidence showing that God just doesn't like contraception.

(yes, I am still working on that other post all about contraception. However it has now got so long and theological I'm gonna have to trim it down).

The 'sin of Onan' is basically 'coitus interruptus', also know as 'the withdrawal method'.

That is, the man 'withdraws' before 'completion of the sexual act'.

If you don't know what I mean then you are probably still sweet and innocent and I won't elaborate any further!

The withdrawal method is used by some as a method of contraception, and so the Bible doesn't just state that God really doesn't like this method, but the principles of it apply to all forms of contraception.

So, I want to summerise the main points in this article that provide much evidence that the withdrawal method (& so the general principle of contraception) is bad.


So, who is Onan?

Basically, Onan was a guy living a loong time ago. (Genesis 38:9-10).

He had a brother who had a wife called Tamar.

And one day, very sadly, the brother died, and Tamar was left as a widow.

It was Jewish custom at the time, that if a man dies and leaves behind a wife, the dead-man's brother should marry the widow and produce sons for his dead brother.

So Onan had to marry Tamar.

Genesis 38:8

"Unite with your brother's widow, in fulfillment of your duty as brother-in-law, and thus preserve your brother's line."

Onan however knew that the children that would be produced wouldn't be his, and so, for whatever reason, decided he didn't want them.

Therefore during sexual relations with Tamar he didn't 'complete' the sexual act.

He practiced the contraceptive method of 'withdrawl' to avoid getting Tamar pregnant.

The Bible says he 'spilt (or wasted) his seed on the ground'

(seed means sperm)


Genesis 38:9

Onan, however, knew that the descendants would not be counted as his; so whenever he had relations with his brother's widow, he wasted his seed on the ground, to avoid contributing offspring for his brother.

and how did God feel about this?

Well, this really upset and angered God....and so God killed him.

Genesis 38:10

What he did greatly offended the LORD, and the LORD took his life too

Does it seem harsh? Well, maybe that's because we've become so numb to sin that we don't see the same evil that God does.


So anyway, people argue about this case in one of two ways.

Since the early 1900s people have started saying that Onan was killed by God just because his disobeyed the Jewish rule to produce children for his dead-brother with his brother's widow.

They say that God killed him because his disobeyed this teaching.
It has nothing to do with the 'spilling of the seed', but just a punishment for a disobedience.


But, other people say that it has everything to do with the 'spilling of the seed', and that this contraceptive act itself was why God killed Onan.

I never really had much ammunition in my belt for arguing this latter case...untill now.

Here are some reasons (from the article), that prove that God killed Onan because he contracepted.

You can read them in full in the article, I have just summerised them below so that I can remember them and whip them out when needed in an argument!


1. Jewish scolars believe that this passage of Scripture condemns contracepted intercourse. That is pretty strong evidence.



2. The book of Deuteronomy in the Bible says what type of punishment a man should recieve if he refuses to comply with the law and produce children with his dead-brother's widow.

This punishment is just a relatively mild public humiliation in the form of a brief ceremony of indignation. The childless widow, in the presence of the town elders, would remove the sandal from her uncooperative brother-in-law and spit in his face for his refusal to marry her. The brother was then supposed to receive an uncomplimentary nickname—"the Unshod" (Deut. 25:8-10).

But what punishment did Onan get?

He didn't get a spit in the face, a slap with a sandal and a weird nick-name.

he got death.

I think we can all agree that that is a much more serious punishment, and so it is logical to come to the conclusion that his sin was a much more serious sin than just not wanting to have his brother's children.

He had sex, but tried all he could to prevent the natural consequences of it (as do people when they use artificial contraception).



3. If you've read the Bible you will have realised how delicately they deal with issues of sex. Good and holy sex are always referred to very purely; "knowing" one’s spouse (Gen. 4:17, Luke 1:34), "going in to" one’s wife (entering her tent or bedchamber, Gen. 6:4, 2 Sam. 16:22, 2 Chron. 23:7).

Whereas when the Bible uses somewhat more explicit language to refer to sex it is without exception referring to sinful, shameful sexual acts.

I think it is pretty clear that this passage about Onan is pretty explicit; it actually tells you exactly what Onan did during sex.

Onan withdrew from Tamar before the 'completion' of the sexual act, allowing his semen to be spilt on the ground.

This didn't happen by accident, he did it specifically because he didn't want Tamar to get pregnant.

He wanted sex, but not the natural consequence of that sex (i.e. babies).

(sex but blocking out about babies... sounds like all modern methods of contraception!).

(except natural family planning of course, which isn't really a method of contraception).


So Onan withdrew from Tamar during sex and spilt his semen on the ground.
This is a pretty yuckily explicit thing to tell us if there is no purpose for telling us.

Why would the writer of Genesis tell us such a specific explicit sexual detail if it wasn't important?

The reason we are told exactly what Onan did, is because it IS important!

It explains why he was then killed.

This tells us that there is something definitly wrong about what Onan did.

and not just what he failed to do (i.e. failing to produce children for his dead brother), but rather the WAY he went about doing that, basically having sex but contracepting, upset and agered God.


Also, it is interesting to note that the term 'spilling of seed' is also used in the book of Leviticus when referring to the terribleness of homosexual acts (which also deserved the death penalty)Lev. 18: 22, 20:13.




4. The text actually says that what Onan did was a detestable thing and that the Lord was not at all happy with it.

The fact that this comes right after the part which describes Onan's seed spilling means it is totally logical to see that it is referring to the seed spilling.

God didn't kill Onan just because he didn't want to produce children for his dead brother.

God killed him because of the way in which Onan went about doing this.

Onan didn't say "I don't want my brother's children and so I will abstain and NOT have sex."

Instead he said "I don't want my brother's children but I will have sex and use a form of contraception."


SUMMARY:

So although this part of the Bible (Genesis 38:9–10) does probably show that Onan did a very bad thing towards his dead brother by intentionally not producing children with Tamar, nonetheless it is the unnatural contracepted sexual act in itself that is presented as the most gravely sinful aspect of Onan's treatment of Tamar—the aspect for which God cut short his life.


That this passage explicitly shows God's unhappiness with contraception was supported by everyone; the Fathers and Doctors of the Catholic Church, by the Protestant Reformers, and by nearly all celibate and married theologians of all Christian denominations.

That is, until the early years of this century, when people started twisiting it and saying that that is not actually what it meant in order to be able to justify using contraception.

and now we have the contraception-rampant society that we do and are so blind that we can't see the evilness of this sin.

This is just one piece of evidence in the Bible that proves that GOD DOESN'T LIKE CONTRACEPTION!

There are many more instances! I promise I will write about them!

We shall give the last word here to Pope Pius XI, who, in quoting the greatest of the Church Fathers, summed up and reaffirmed this unbroken tradition in his encyclical on Christian marriage, Casti Connubii (1930). After roundly condemning as intrinsically contrary to the natural moral law all practices that intend to deprive the conjugal act of its procreative power, the Pontiff gave an authoritative interpretation of this biblical text, which not only confirms the tradition, but also is itself confirmed by impartial and historically well-informed exegesis: "Wherefore it is not surprising that the Sacred Scriptures themselves also bear witness to the fact that the divine Majesty attends this unspeakable depravity with the utmost detestation, sometimes having punished it with death, as St. Augustine recalls: ‘For it is illicit and shameful for a man to lie with even his lawful wife in such a way as to prevent the conception of offspring. This is what Onan, son of Judah, used to do, and for that God slew him’ (cf. Gen. 38:8?10)."

The full article is also a good read, what I have here is just my summary of the main points.

YOU CAN READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

Birthday Meme

I was tagged by Paulinus to do this birthday meme:

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The Rules:

1) Go to Wikipedia

2) In the search box, type your birth month and day but not the year.

3) List three events that happened on your birthday

4) List two important birthdays and one death

5) One holiday or observance (if any)



Here are my answers:


List three events that happened on your birthday

1827 - According to Joseph Smith, Jr., the angel Moroni gave him a record of gold plates, one-third of which Joseph translated into The Book of Mormon.

(nothing to be proud of!!)

1897 - The "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" letter is published in the New York Sun.

(ha! How ironic, given my recent posts!!)

1937 - J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is published.


List two important birthdays and one death

birth:

1866 - H. G. Wells, English writer

(author of 'The Time-Machine' and 'War of the Worlds')

...and I can't find anyone else I know!

death:

19 BC - Virgil, Roman poet (b. 70 BC)


One holiday or observance

Catholic feast day of St. Matthew the Evangelist.


I tag...Zoe, Radical Catholic Mom & Carmel...and anyone else who wants to play!

wow..

...now THIS is a family who had faith:

St. Felicity (2nd century)

Felicity was a rich, noble Roman widow. When she refused to worship pagan gods, her seven sons were arrested and given the same order. They refused as well. Felicity was then forced to watch as her children were executed one by one. After each one was killed, she was given the chance to reject her faith and save the remaining sons and herself, but she refused, and was beheaded.

Isn't that increadible?! St. Felicity was beheaded in year 165, so her and her family were one of thr first Christians. What amazing and praise-worthy love they had for Jesus, and what powerful faith!