Putting Man’s Law Before God’s

This is most disturbing:

Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, on Tuesday weighed into an abortion debate that is roiling emotions in the largely Catholic country, saying doctors have to put their obligation to the patient and the law above their religious beliefs.

Tusk’s comment came after a well-known obstetrician in Warsaw, Bogdan Chazan, caused uproar by refusing to allow a woman to abort a fetus with serious head and brain defects. A declared Catholic, Chazan argued that an abortion would be against his personal beliefs and the woman now has to give birth to the child.

In Poland, abortion is legal until the 25th week of pregnancy when the mother’s life is at risk or if the fetus is badly damaged or the result of rape or incest.

“Regardless of what his conscience is telling him, (a doctor) must carry out the law,” Tusk said. “Every patient must be sure that … the doctor will perform all procedures in accordance with the law and in accordance with his duties.”

The woman has lodged a complaint with the health minister, who has ordered a review of the case.

Chazan is one of around 3,000 Polish doctors —from among some 161,000 — who have signed a “Declaration of Faith” saying they are believers and consider abortion, birth control, in vitro fertilization and euthanasia as being against their faith. The much-debated declaration also states the doctors “recognize the primacy of God’s law over human law” and see the need to “counter the imposed, anti-human ideologies of contemporary civilization.”

Poland’s influential Catholic Church has voiced its support for the doctors who have signed the declaration. – SOURCE – Daily Mail

What has become of Catholics when they put man’s law and adherence to it above God’s.  It is God’s law that children are gifts regardless of how they were conceived or formed.  It is man’s that such children can be thrown out in the trash.   No doctor should be told he must put man’s law above God’s for comfort and convenience.

 

 

 

Christian Women Face The World

Out here in flyover country, a disturbing trend is presenting itself – the niqab, or Muslim women’s face covering is appearing more and more.  To see it in a country where women are encouraged to consider themselves the equal of men and valued in our own right is rather jarring whether we agree with the notion or not.

The United States is not a Muslim theocracy where women HAVE to over themselves from head to toe everyday just because the mullahs say so.  Tough for those who think we are no longer Christian, too.

In trying to find out how it is that Islam insists on this practice as there are many women who only wear a headscarf for modesty, a little research was in order.  In the process, an even more jarring factoid about Muslim women’s attire surfaced – outside of the hard-line theocracies, wearing a niqab is a woman’s choice.

These women hide themselves.

Women wearing a niqab in the west choose to present only their eyes to the world.  Why?  Because presenting their visage to the world leaves many of them uncomfortable as they feel immodest and vulnerable when men view their faces.  At least that’s what a good many of the blogs out there written by women who wear a niqab say about the matter.

It is not required, but what does merely offering the option say about a religion?  God, in the case of Islam is called Allah, made women and by the rules of the “religion” they are permitted to go into the world participating in it and hiding at the same time.  As if they exist and don’t exist simultaneously.  And what does that say about Islam’s collective opinion of God’s largesse.  Hide away what God has made?

In Christianity, we believe that we are made in God’s image.  Every time we face another human being, we are looking at God’s creation, whether the person has fallen from grace – or modesty – or not.  We are all individual.  No two are the same, even people who are identical siblings, having split from the same zygote in the womb.  This is a celebration of God’s goodness.

We Christian ladies are encouraged to embrace our femininity within the bounds of modesty.  There are those who flaunt the rules, but at the same time, there are many who leave no doubt that they are female while leaving a little mystery for the eye of the beholder.  We enjoy it – and we enjoy the difference between men and women.  More importantly, the men of Christianity are taught to respect women.  Well, they are supposed to be taught that.  We’ve all run into dirty old men, guys that use females and creepy priests who need to go to confession.  But the basic teachings of Christianity treat women as people to be cherished, not hidden away, and certainly not choosing to hide oneself while in the world.  (Women in cloisters do not participate in the world, so there is no comparison with contemplative nuns.)

Standards of modesty have changed over the centuries, but one thing has not – Christian women face the world – literally.  At various times during history, our hair has been covered as St. Paul instructed and tradition at marriage has women presented to their new husbands with veils removed BEFORE the vows.  But there is no tradition of the face, the self, being hidden from the world, choice or not.  We do not  disappear simply because we feel threatened by the world or because men make us uncomfortable.

From personal experience, I will say that Muslim men are far more obvious about their fascination, admiration or otherwise staring at women.  Yes, it is very uncomfortable.  You can almost see these guys licking their chops.  Christian, Jewish and athiest me are far more polite about it.

“The world can be better if there’s love, tolerance and humility.”

Some 20 years ago now, I knew a woman who was a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union, originally from Odessa in Ukraine.  This woman was everything we know Eastern European women to be, but very smart, in her own way very good and knew the hypocrisies of American life for what they are.

When the film Schindler’s List was released, several people asked her if she had seen it and she said, “I don’t need to see it.  I know.  There were thousands who did what Walter Schindler did.”  (Emphasis hers.)

This week the world lost one such person.  Her name was Irena Sendler.  She was the daughter of a Polish physician and part of an underground network that smuggled thousands of children out of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw preserving their identities and locations should their families survive so that they might be reunited after the war.  Some were, some were not.

Her story appeared – for many of us for the first time – in the UK’s Daily Mail.  It is an extraordinary account of a woman determined to do good and serve humanity to the best of her ability with no desire for recognition, even though so many insisted.  It is definitely worth reading.

More than that, Ms. Sendler’s words toward the bottom of the article say more about the world than all the pundits preaching peace could ever hope to convey:

“After World War II, it seemed that humanity understood something, and nothing like that would happen again.

“Humanity has understood nothing. Religious, tribal, national wars continue. The world continues to be in a sea of blood.”

But she added: “The world can be better if there’s love, tolerance and humility.”

Pequiescat in pace, Ms. Sendler.

God Does Not Create Numbers

Perfection was hung on a cross 2,000 years ago. – Mike Shannon, St. Louis Cardinals broadcaster.

We Americans, particularly women, are held in a sort of prison of perfection.  From all quarters of our lives,we are expected to strive for perfection: meet incredibly high – and arbitrary – standards of behavior and beauty set by Lord only knows who in order to be considered as beautiful or worthy of love.  At least that is the way many of of us feel.

Naturally, that is a bit of an exaggeration,  but sometimes it really does seem that way.

From the time we are born in the United States, we are compared to a set of numbers.  Birth weight and length are the main two on the first day, but APGAR scores are measured – Appearance, Pulse, Grimace,Activity, and Respiration – to be sure that a newborn is ready for the rigors of the world.

As life goes on, our growth progress is charted and compared against other children our own age.  We are considered to be of the such and such percentile when it comes to height and weight.  How and when our teeth come in is tracked.  What age we are when we walk is deemed important.

In our primary school years, we are tracked against a set of standards.  Do we cooperate?  Do we get frustrated?  Are we assertive enough?  Do we listen in class?  Early progress reports actually ask the questions.  Later on, we receive letter grades for our efforts.  A is perfect, and, according to all higher wisdom, what we should strive for.  Standardized tests are administered to track our progress against everyone else.  The higher the score, the better.

In high school, those letters are matched with numbers and averaged to give us a grade point average or GPA, an indicator of academic success regardless of the class load taken or the rigors of the system of study.  For those who are college bound, we take standardized tests to give college recruiters an idea of our aptitude in any one area.  Whether or not such information was taught in our schools is not the point.

Socially, we are judged, rightly or wrongly, by how we adhere to fashion standards, filling out clothing just right and coiffing in a particular style.  Our teeth are straightened to match the ideal of a beautiful smile.  We learn to be sufficiently snarky toward people not in the social set considered to be at the top.  Not accepting those who are different.

Once out of college and in a real job, every year our employers review our performance.  How well did we perform against the expectations laid out for us.  The grades are not letters, sometimes are numbers and always include the words “needs improvement.”  Whether or not help is available to achieve this improvement is rarely mentioned.  At least not in the reviews.

We are encouraged to see a physician every year as our physical condition is tracked: height and weight which are then ratioed and compared against an “ideal” body mass index or BMI which famously does not take into account body type.  Doesn’t seem to matter.  A lot of us are too short for our weight.

In all of this, we are trained to think of ourselves in terms of numbers.  How are we doing against what is considered the ideal?  We are judged against that.  Not how we treat our family and friends.  Not how we respectfully disagree with others without insulting them.  Not how we give of our time and talents to help others.  We Americans are a social security number with a height and weight that might get a 2 on a scale of getting along with others in the workplace.

It’s enough to make a person really depressed.  Especially women who take criticism to heart and internalize it.

It takes a while to accept, but there is no such thing as human perfection.  Christ and His Mother are our only known examples – and that may well have been simply perfection of the soul.  None of us are perfect. None of us ever will be.  Even a baseball pitcher needs the other eight people on the field for a perfect game.

As God creates us in His image, and not physically or academically perfect, He tells us that it is acceptable to be human.  It is acceptable to fail.  It is acceptable to be who we are and not apologize for it.

None of us are just a number in God’s eyes.

Forgetting the Soul

Not too long ago, I was watching an evening news story where a number of dead bodies resulting from a disaster were placed in a mass grave and covered with soil by an earth-mover. The reporter said, “Twenty souls buried.”

Twenty souls? How can a dead body be a soul? A soul is spirit, the eternal part of human existence, that which we feed with Faith and altruism. This is the part of us that goes to Heaven – or not – when our bodies die. This should be a no-brainer.

It is most distressing to hear people who claim to be Christian ignore this part of life and confuse it with what is mortal. The body is mortal – it dies. The soul is not and does not. It lives forever – and where it goes after earthly life depends on what we do with our mortal selves.

This is a truth that modern society, regardless of faith, does not want to hear. Every aspect of life as dictated by those who would control us, either by government, messages disseminated by the MSM or entertainment media and any other number of ways including wealth building, “healthcare” and more, concentrates on the here and now and not what our actions do to our souls.

Leaving aside day to day morality and how harmful the incivility and very base selfishness that has invaded our society is to the soul, consider for once the soul of the unborn child. Here is a person with unique DNA from the time of conception that at twenty-two days of life – twenty two days after his or her parents’ actions resulted in this child – has a heart-beat and blood. At this point, the baby has a head, a spinal cord developing and everything needed to become a viable and healthy adult so long as nurturing and care-taking occurs. Far from being a “clump of cells,” which implies randomness, an unborn person is an individual with cells ordered to make this transformation a reality.

This child also has a soul. A soul that is as unique as any adult’s. There is no “scientific” way to measure when and how the soul is attached and melded with the body, but all indications from Scripture are that they are inseparable from conception. In “science,” however, that is not admissible. It’s a matter of faith.

There are many stories of activists who pushed in the early days for “rights” for women to kill their children while still in the womb who changed sides after decades of participating in the holocaustic taking of truly innocent life. Several stand out, but in the case of the soul, one specific story is vital, not of an American, but a Serbian doctor who was visited in dreams by a man who he did not know at the time. The man is Thomas Aquinas, a canonized saint in the Catholic Church and, frankly, one of the most brilliant theologians to ever live. He appeared in a dream to this doctor, <a href=”http://www.andrewcusack.com/2008/11/16/adasevic/&#8221; target=”_blank”>Stojan Adasevic</a>, along with all the children that Adasevic had killed during his career. The next day, Adasevic performed yet another of the procedures that gave him wealth and prestige and pulled a still beating heart from a womb. He gave up the practice that very day.

What this story does not tell is that even St. Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor who wrote devotional chants that we still use and is widely considered to be one of the Church’s most accomplished theologians, erred when it came to the soul. Even he thought the soul to be a later addition. Many believe his appearance to Dr. Adasevic was a way to atone for this. In the end it does not matter.

The soul is who and what we are as part of God’s plan. Forgetting this in the case of the unborn has resulted in the killing of a huge percentage of more than one generation. Even before the heart starts beating, a child is part of God’s plan. There is no getting around this for those who believe in God, His Son Jesus Christ and the message that He brought to us two thousand years ago. This is what the “progressives” want us to forget. This is why the truth of unborn child killing and methods to prevent a conceived child from growing inside of its mother is cloaked in euphemisms like “choice” and clinical terms meant to make it all sound “scientific” when they are simply the Latin words for baby, against conceiving, womb and to terminate prematurely.

As a culture, we’ve forgotten the soul. And women, who are privileged to carry more than one soul at a time, have betrayed their purpose in not standing up to men and reminding them of this fact. But, if one does not believe in the soul, it’s a very easy thing to forget – and to bury.

Skinny Jeans, a little too revealing

Skinny jeans is one of those fashion mistakes that resurfaces when the generation that wore them previously has “graduated” to less “fashion forward” clothes.  It’s not unusual for fashion trends to be recycled and be given a new twist and foisted on  the public.

This one, though, is especially troubling.  Skinny jeans leave nothing to the imagination.  Nothing at all.  Just like their fashion cousin the legging, skinny jeans are all about revelation.

It does look like the fashion muses may be turning their focus elsewhere, but for now, even pre-teens are revealing what is under their clothes by wearing them as tight as possible.

Is it any wonder, then, that objectification of women and girls is occurring?