Strange Times, Indeed!

Writing about the new law in California allowing abortions to be performed by nurses, midwives, and physician's assistants, Chuck Donovan over at The Corner says (emphasis mine):

We live in extraordinary times. Bearing a child has never been safer; never have its processes been more dramatically presented to the human eye than they are now through advanced ultrasound; and medical miracles are happening on the frontiers of perinatology with dazzling regularity. In the midst of all this, our governing overseers offer women and girls less time and less care with less-accomplished medical professionals, no public health tracking, and precious little follow-up. By what standard of civilization does this make sense – or constitute justice?

Amen, brother!

“Men settle down when they get married: if they fail to get married they fail to settle down.” Read more here.

"Don't Assume That Everyone Knows That God Loves Them"

This is turning into quote day. I am passing this along from The Anchoress, who is quoting another blogger, Rebecca Ryskind Teti. Anyway, here's the quote:

Now the tears came to my eyes, too. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Here was a beloved daughter of God who did not know how much God loves her: who had no inkling of the beauty and value of her own soul, no notion of God’s infinite mercy – his power to draw good from evil circumstances, to “make all things new.” How it must have ached her fragile heart to sit in this class hearing about the beauty of the relationship with Christ, but with no understanding that it was available to her, too. She thought she had “blown it” and must forever look wistfully in at the windows of Christianity, never to be allowed inside.

This reminds me of the saying, "Be kind, for everyone is fighting a great battle." We never know what wounds and burdens others are carrying.

The Cross and Colonoscopies

I haven't posted anything from Happy Catholic recently, so there is no time like the present. She is reflecting on the Catholic practice of "Offering it Up", as she had a chance to do with her coloscopy. Actually, this is a quote of a quote. She found this in Magnificat magazine.

Crosses are the great means God employs to deny self-love in us and to increase and purify his love within us. While we, on our side, labor for these two ends by the means which he has placed at our disposal. The crosses finish the work; without them it would be imperfect. The reason of this is clear. Self cannot kill itself; the blow must be struck from elsewhere and self must rest passive in receiving it. As long as I act I live; I shall mortify myself in vain, I shall not succeed in dying spiritually by my own efforts. God must do this for me. He must act within me, and the fire of love must consume the victim. There are so many different kinds of crosses that it is impossible to enumerate them all; and the same crosses are capable of infinite variety. They change according to different characters, different circumstances, different degrees. Some are simply painful, others are humiliating, others unite humiliation to pain. Some assail a man in his worldly possessions, in those who are dear to him in his health, in his honor, even in his life. Others assail him in his spiritual interests, in that which touches his conscience, in that which concerns his eternal salvation; and these are undoubtedly the most frequent, the most destructive, and the most difficult to bear ... All have an effect upon us which inward mortification is unable to produce, and without them we cannot expect to attain to an eminent degree of holiness. Father Jean-Nicholas Gage

Good stuff!

Head and Heart

I read this over at Catholic Culture.org:

The conservative or traditional Catholic, on the other hand, sees in such a “preferential option for the affective” a direct challenge to the Faith itself, such that love becomes unmoored from meaning, and we are doomed to love in ways which do not, in fact, really seek the other’s good. Consequently he spends the bulk of his “spiritual” time fortifying his own understanding of the content of the Faith and explaining why those who do not accept the whole content are not truly Catholic at all. As this becomes habitual, the conservative gains a reputation for being doctrinaire; he becomes increasingly dismissive of those who resist the full authority of Catholic teaching. His acid test for the Christian life becomes orthodoxy. What is important is the head, not the heart.

It hits home. Guilty, O Lord!

From A Man For All Seasons

I ran across this quote, looking for the quote about Wales to send to Caroline:
Sir Thomas More: I think that when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.