WobLog

Poet John Dunne said, "No man is an island" and I think his statement is true. Today, however, I felt very sad because my neighbor has been isolated without my knowing it.

I make a great effort to know all our neighbors, which is difficult in these days when moms rarely stay home and all are, by definition, "too busy." I think it's important to have a sense of community where we live, but despite my efforts, I have to admit our community is pretty shallow.

Today I went over to my neighbor's house to return a whiffle ball that his grandchildren had batted into our yard. After we returned the ball, he asked if I knew that his wife had died of cancer in March.

It was a little like being hit in the stomach. I am certain this neighbor's family are helping him, and I am sure he had friends to ease the burden, but I was shocked that a neighbor who lives right next door to me could lose his wife, and I wouldn't know about it. We had visited them in January, and she died in March. Now it is May.

Had I known, I would have made him dinner, I would have invited him to dinner. This incident only confirms for me that these days the places where our homes reside are not really communities. They are locations. If ones tries or is lucky, one can have real community at church, like we do, or with family, as we also do, but what about those poor souls who are unchurched, or who lack a good relationship with family? Without real communities to live in, how do they ever survive without feeling all alone?

"any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for
thee."

Posted by Lisa Roberts at 2:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Back in December (2005), the Becket fund gathered law scholars together to determine the impact that same-sex "marriage" would have on religious freedom. The obvious example involved Boston's Catholic Charities ceasing adoption services (after 100 years of finding homes for children) because Massachusetts's laws required them to place children with homosexual couples, an act Catholics find immoral. The charity halted adoptions to obey a Higher Law. The Becket fund study has determined other ways the legalization of same-sex "marriage" will impact religious freedom, and it appears the scholars (who run the gamut from liberal to conservative) have found a host of things to worry about. The study's papers have yet to be published, but several are available in PDF, so if you want to get into the nitty-gritty and see the projected future battlegrounds if same-sex "marriage" becomes law, read the papers. I find this all quite sobering.

Posted by Lisa Roberts at 8:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Amazingly, on a trip plagued by rain, the sun broke free during Benedict XVI's visit to the Birkenau death camp. As the Holy Father paid his respects to the dead, a rainbow appeared in the sky above. A commenter at Amy Welborn's blog noted that perhaps it was God's way of promising that such a horror would never happen again.

However, Michael Ledeen makes a necessary point at National Review Online:

Let us hope that no future Pope has to ask these questions about Western appeasement of evil in our own times:

Benedict said it was almost impossible, particularly for a German Pope, to speak at such a horrible place.

"The place where we are standing is a place of memory and at the same time, it is the place of the Shoah," he said.

"In a place like this, words fail. In the end, there can only be a dread silence, a silence which is a heartfelt cry to God — Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"

"Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?"

Benedict is a great leader, and we can all be grateful that the Catholics have now given us two such men in succession. But I think the question is more properly directed at man rather than the Almighty, who gave us the ability to distinguish between good and evil and the obligation to make our own choices. It is the question we should ask ourselves, and our leaders, every day. Why is the West once again silent, in the face of a monstrous evil? Why do even the few leaders who recognize our menace, content themselves with words rather than the decisive deeds required to rid this world of the threat of a new Shoah?

Popes are not supposed to say such things, I suppose, but we are. And we must.

Ledeen is right. If the Holocaust is never to happen again (at the hands of a madman such as Ahmadinejad, for example), then it is up to free men of good will to prevent it. That rainbow might be a promise by God, but the burden of responsibility falls on us.

For the text of the Pope's speech at Auschwitz, check out Gerald's blog.

Posted by Don Roberts at 8:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Don Roberts at 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My friend Derk has an interesting post on Picasso that got me thinking about fame and talent.

Picasso wrote of himself that he wasn't really an artist, not like the old great masters such as Giotto, Titian, or Rembrandt. He spoke about his celebrity.

Celebrity has always played a part in human society, and always will, but I wonder if talent held much larger sway until modern times. Today celebrity, or even notoriety, offers people of minor or no talent an opportunity to hold the attention of millions. Andy Warhol (himself someone who benefitted greatly from celebrity) talked about everyone having his 15 minutes of fame. A quick perusal of Reality TV indicates that Warhol had a point.

Celebrity has little attraction for me, either personally or as an idol. I would hate to be a celebrity since I value privacy, and I can honestly say that the people I admire are only celebrities in very narrow circles -- Jesus Christ, G.K.Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas -- certainly not popular in the public at large, with the possible exception of Jesus.

I wonder how vastly different the world would be if people valued real talent and goodness rather than celebrity. Actually, reflecting on it a bit longer, I suspect the world has never valued talent and goodness above celebrity. The medium of television only exacerbates an existing condition.

Posted by Lisa Roberts at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

The California Senate passed SB1437, the bill requiring California public school textbooks to teach about the homosexual lifestyle and its "positive" influence in our history, all under the guise of "anti-discrimination." (A bill that requires removal of words like "Mother" and "Father" as discriminatory is reverse discrimination.)

You can urge the Governor to veto this bill if the Assembly passes it by calling the following automated line: 916-445-2841. It took me less than 1 minute to make my call.

The phone recording will ask:
If you want this message in English?: Press 1 for Yes
Is this in regards to a legislation bill? Yes, Press 2
Is the bill SB 1437? Yes, Press 1
Are you in favor of this legislation? NO, Press 2

It's time for the majority to be heard in this state. SB1437 would be bad law, and we need to push back and tell the nuts in Sacramento to knock it off!

Posted by Lisa Roberts at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We had a very full day today, which started like normal with breakfast and homeschooling, though it was punctuated with the excitement of Don getting home mid-morning from a trip. We ate lunch, and then we headed off for our first honest-to-goodness public protest! The kids and I met with several other Catholics in front of the Hacienda Regal Cinema to protest the release of The Dumb Vinci Code. Oh, I mean, The Da Vinci Code. We had Rosaries and signs protesting the movie.

We must have been really tough there with our violent Rosaries swaying in the wind, because someone called the police and told them we were "throwing things." The police realized pretty quickly that they'd been had, and they were quite nice to us. (They'd sent two cars, though, so we must have really been portrayed as daunting!) Most people who saw us seemed more puzzled than anything, though one lady joined us in our prayer, and others came to ask what we were so upset about. (Hmm, does blasphemy not get anyone angry these days?) A group of young men took their pictures in front of us at a distance, as if to say, "Look at the kooks we encountered on our way to the movies!" It was a very strange experience for me to have so many people staring at me with varying looks from approval to hostility. Even stranger were the looks we got from the local security, before the police came. They acted like they expected us to break into violence at any minute, and they walked around us in a rather intimidating manner for some time. For Heaven's sake, we were the mildest-looking people, some with young children, and we were praying. Come to think of it, though, prayer is pretty powerful.

Unfortunately, after we'd been there about an hour, our day's plans got altered. Alex started to have an allergy attack. I decided he needed to get indoors, so we walked back to the car and I drove to the grocery store to buy some antihistimine for him. By the time we got to the store, his eyes were swelling. Not just the skin around his eyes, but the whites of his eyes. The whites had begun to overlap the edges of the iris. We went into the store and I asked the pharmacist if there was anything over the counter we could use. He got us some Claritin and opened the package right there for us so Alex could have some. He suggested going to the doctor if things didn't clear up in 3 hours. So I did a little shopping, but then decided I needed to call the doctor myself. They told us to come in.

So off we went. To make a long story short, Alex ended up with a breathing treatment to ease his wheezing, and now he's on an inhalant for a week, as well as Claritin every day. When we got into the car after the doctor's office visit, Alex said, "Well, at least I didn't die." We have a very unusual three-year old boy. And a day that reminded me that we are not in control of our lives.

Posted by Lisa Roberts at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Randall Terry (founder of Operation Rescue) entered the Catholic Church on Holy Thursday this year. National Catholic Register has an excellent article covering his life and conversion; it's worth reading. This is definitely a man who takes on dragons, and the Church is lucky to have him.

Posted by Lisa Roberts at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yep, those wacky politicians are at it again. Here in loopy California, SB1437 has just passed the Senate and is on its way to the Assembly and then to the Governor's desk if it passes. SB1437 proposes changes to the state's textbooks to remove any "gender-specific" words, like, oh, "Mom" or "Dad," and requires the history books to specifically list the contributions of lesbians, homosexuals, bisexuals, transgendered, oh, you know, just name your sexual perversion and it's got to be lauded. Never mind that some of these textbooks that would have to be modified are for first graders, who ought not to be hearing about sexuality at all. But it isn't only text books. It's also "social events." So goodbye Prom "King" or "Queen."

Here's my letter to the Governor:

Dear Governor -

The text book bill SB1437 (requiring new California textbooks to advance a pro-homosexual agenda, including things like removing 'Mom' and 'Dad' from textbooks) has passed the CA Senate. If it passes in the Assembly and comes to your desk, I urge you to veto the bill. This is heavy-handed propaganda, and the state is going too far. In addition, this bill will cause a huge waste of tax payer money if public schools have to then go out and purchase all new texts, not because history has changed, but because we have decided we have to skew how we teach it to fit the PC movement of the day.

As Karen England, executive director of Capitol Resource Institute, says, "SB 1437 seeks to eliminate all 'stereotypes' of the traditional family so that young children are brainwashed into believing that families with moms and dads are irrelevant."

I don't want to pay for that.

I'll be watching to see what you do. I hope I'll still be able to vote for you.

Sincerely,
Lisa Roberts

Now, go write your own letter to the Governor (http://www.govmail.ca.gov/) and your state Assemblyman (http://www.assembly.ca.gov/)!

Posted by Lisa Roberts at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

We say two decades of a family Rosary every night. In general, things go pretty well, at least as well as can be expected with a 5 and 3 year old participating. Tonight as I said the Rosary with Sarah and Alex, I had to fight for composure. Alex has a habit of sometimes saying the Rosary as I imagine Bob Dylan might say it. "Hail MARY, full of GRACE, the LORD is with THEE..." It has happened before, and each time it does I have to ignore him so I don't laugh, which would insure that Bob Dylan moved into our home to stay. But tonight, something even harder to ignore happened. "Blessed is the FRUIT of thy WOMB... W-W-W Womb W-W-W Womb..." Yes, Alex is learning the sounds letters make and he picked the middle of a prayer to try out his W's. I let him do it for awhile till I realized he had no plans to stop, and then I directed his mind back to prayer. (Okay, I think I very sternly said, "Alex!") We actually finished in pretty good form. This is the way family prayer is. It brings us together, it gives us wonderful memories, and it glorifies God, Our Heavenly Father.

Posted by Lisa Roberts at 9:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A good Christian friend of mine asked me for advice today. She wanted to know, essentially, whether some actions she planned would be sinful. This immediately brought to mind the Catholic idea of cooperation with evil. This teaching is truly a blessing the Church has given us to help us with the murkier bits of morality.

The idea (vastly simplified) is that there are two kinds of cooperation with evil. The first is called Formal, and it is always sinful. An example would be performing or procuring an abortion. The second kind of cooperation is called Material, and it can be broken into two subgroups, Remote and Proximate. (There are more distinctions not mentioned here.) The first, Remote Material cooperation is not sinful when committed in the presence of proportionate reasons, while the second, Proximate Material cooperation is sinful. An example of Proximate Material cooperation might involve someone driving a mother to an abortuary, even if the driver is against the abortion. The abortion wouldn't have happened without his assistance. He sins. An example of Remote Material cooperation would be when a parent uses a vaccine based on aborted babies. If there is no alternative to the tainted vaccine, the parent may use the vaccine without sin since his use is remote to the evil and by using it he prevents harm to his children or to others. But he must use alternatives if available (and thereby have no cooperation with evil), and he should work to make alternatives available and to stop the practice all together. (Via letters to pharmaceutical companies or via the law, for example.)

The Church has given us a very helpful method for thinking about these sticky situations. For a good description of the various types of cooperation with evil, read this article on Catholic Herald.

Posted by Lisa Roberts at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)