Question box Friday

Those who have been through the In Control program know that a highlight of the week is having anonymous questions answered from the "Question Box" on the last day of the program. We are going to attempt answering one question a week on the blog too.

This week's question, "Why do some people think that divorce is wrong?"

All of us probably know someone who has been in a divorce situation, so it is often a difficult topic to address. We look at it through the lens of personal (or that of a friend or family member) experience, which often clouds our perceptions.

In today's society, many people enter into marriage without fully understanding the commitment they are making. Wedding vows are meant to be two people promising that they will love the other freely (not coerced, but of their own free will), totally (completely, not witholding anything), faithfully (committed for a lifetime) and fruitfully (open to the possibility of new life). When two people don't truthfully promise these things at the time of the vows, then the marriage may be considerd invalid. In the Catholic Church, an annulment is granted to state that a true marriage never really occurred. This is different from a civil divorce which says that the marriage has ended.

If two people have given a total gift of themselves to the other, they cannot take that gift back. For something to be total, it must be irrevocable by its very nature.

Marriage is also meant to be a visible sign of God's love for us. God's love never ends. He is always faithful, always loves us totally, freely chooses to shower His love upon us, and He loves us fruitfully, by creating new life.

A married couple has a responsibility to fulfill their vows to each other, but also has a responsibility and honor to be a witness of God's love for us, in as an authentic way as possible, cooperating with God's grace to live out a sign of His love.

That being said, there are some extreme cases when it may be better for two married people to stop living together (in cases of sustained abuse, for example). If a divorce is pursued, it must be remembered, however, that this does not end the marriage in God and the Church's eyes. If the marriage was valid and true, it cannot end. A major problem with divorce is that it tricks people into believing that marriage is permanent only when you want it to be.

Mortality as a blessing?

I was reading George Weigel's, Letters to a Young Catholic last night, when I came across quotations from an article by Leon Kass entitled, "L’Chaim and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?" It's very long but very good, so if you have the time, please read the whole thing. In light of the news a few days ago about scientists creating a three-parent embryo, I found it enlightening. Our culture is afraid of death and suffering, perhaps largely because our culture doesn't believe in eternal life and happiness. Below are a few points explored in the article:

"Conquering death is not something that we can try for a while and then decide whether the results are better or worse-according to, God only knows, what standard. On the contrary, this is a question in which our very humanity is at stake, not only in the consequences but also in the very meaning of the choice. For to argue that human life would be better without death is, I submit, to argue that human life would be better being something other than human. To be immortal would not be just to continue life as we mortals now know it, only forever. The new immortals, in the decisive sense, would not be like us at all. If this is true, a human choice for bodily immortality would suffer from the deep confusion of choosing to have some great good only on the condition of turning into someone else. Moreover, such an immortal someone else, in my view, will be less well off than we mortals are now, thanks indeed to our mortality.

"It goes without saying that there is no virtue in the death of a child or a young adult, or the untimely or premature death of anyone, before they had attained to the measure of man’s days. I do not mean to imply that there is virtue in the particular event of death for anyone. Nor am I suggesting that separation through death is not painful for the survivors, those for whom the deceased was an integral part of their lives. Instead, my question concerns the fact of our finitude, the fact of our mortality-the fact that we must die, the fact that a full life for a human being has a biological, built-in limit, one that has evolved as part of our nature. Does this fact also have value? Is our finitude good for us-as individuals? (I intend this question entirely in the realm of natural reason and apart from any question about a life after death.)

"To praise mortality must seem to be madness. If mortality is a blessing, it surely is not widely regarded as such. Life seeks to live, and rightly suspects all counsels of finitude. “Better to be a slave on earth than the king over all the dead,” says Achilles in Hades to the visiting Odysseus, in apparent regret for his prior choice of the short but glorious life. Moreover, though some cultures-such as the Eskimo-can instruct and moderate somewhat the lust for life, liberal Western society gives it free rein, beginning with a political philosophy founded on a fear of violent death, and reaching to our current cults of youth and novelty, the cosmetic replastering of the wrinkles of age, and the widespread anxiety about disease and survival. Finally, the virtues of finitude-if there are any-may never be widely appreciated in any age or culture, if appreciation depends on a certain wisdom, if wisdom requires a certain detachment from the love of oneself and one’s own, and if the possibility of such detachment is given only to the few. Still, if it is wisdom, the rest of us should hearken, for we may learn something of value for ourselves."

40 Days for Life returns

Coinciding beautifully with the 40 days of Lent, the 40 Days for Life campaign begins again today in 59 cities across the country, as well as in a few other countries. For more information, or to sign up to receive daily prayers and meditations, visit their website. The campaign will be coming to Cincinnati in the spring.

Twin unborn babies save their mother's life

This is an incredible storyfrom LifeNews:

London, England (LifeNews.com) -- Doctors sometimes suggest to women who become pregnant while dealing with cancer that they should have an abortion to save their own life. However, in the case of a British woman, her twin unborn children saved her life when they knocked loose a tumor that had been developing on her cervix.

Unbeknown to 35-year-old Michelle Stepney, a tumor had been developing insider her and she headed to the hospital thinking she may have had a miscarriage.

Doctors diagnosed her with life-threatening cervical cancer and suggested she have an abortion on her twin babies to be able to have chemotherapy, according to the London Daily Mail.
Stepney declined and physicians agreed to give her lower doses of chemotherapy with the hope of stopping the cancer during the pregnancy, the newspaper said.

Ironically, the babies ultimately saved their mother's life as their constant kicking dislodged the developing tumor.

"I couldn't believe it when the doctors told me that the babies had dislodged the tumor," she told the newspaper. "I'd felt them kicking, but I didn't realize just how important their kicking would turn out to be."

"I owe my life to my girls, and that's why I could have never agreed with a termination," Stepney said. "If I hadn't been pregnant with the twins, the cancer may not have been discovered until it was too late."

"I knew I could have an operation straight away and it would cure me of the cancer, but that would mean getting rid of my babies and I couldn't do that," Stepney added.

Since then, Michelle and her husband Scott have given birth to the girls, Alice and Harriet.
The newspaper said the babies were delivered by Caesarian section at 33 weeks into the pregnancy in December 2006.

Other than having no hair because of the chemo, the babies were healthy and in fine condition.
"When I heard them both let out a cry it was the best sound in the world," mom told the newspaper.

Stepney is now free from cancer and the babies just celebrated their first birthday and are happy and healthy.

As Alice in Wonderland would say ... Curiouser and curiouser

Just when you thought life couldn't get much stranger, scientists in Britain have created a human embryo with three parents -- DNA from one father and two mothers. The reason? They are hoping to prevent certain hereditary diseases by adding the DNA of another parent. Why do we think that we can play God with human life, that we know better than Him? You can read more details here.

Quote book

"Demand of yourself, even if no one else demands of you." -- Pope John Paul II

"Bodies ... the Exhibition" and theology of the body

Great controversy is stirring in the Queen City as, "Bodies ... The Exhibition" is opening at the Cincinnati Museum Center today. Ethical issues about the exhibit were largely unspoken until Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk released a statement urging Catholic schools not to take field trips to "Bodies." Bishop Roger Foys followed suit yesterday.

I spent a great deal of time yesterday contemplating how the principles of Pope John Paul II's theology of the body could relate to "Bodies." Below are some main points:

• What is the purpose of the body? According to Pope John Paul II, the body reveals the person. We are able to experience our own personhood and that of other people through the body. We are more than a collection of body parts -- we are emotional, spiritual and mental, as well. The body is also meant to reveal God to us. He created us male and female, with intellect and will, in order for us to know Him, love Him, and serve Him.
• Our bodies are not skin to be shed upon death. God-willing, in heaven, we will experience the resurrection of our bodies, not just our souls. Therefore, the body deserves respect and proper treatment during and after earthly life.
• "Bodies" is only focusing on the biological aspect of the person, thereby reducing a someone to a something. While staring at someone's circulatory system or skeletal structure, I doubt most visitors will contemplate who this person was -- their feelings, dreams, goals, age, and purpose in life. Instead, these people become objects used not persons loved.
• What Pope John Paul II said about pornography can be relevant to this situation as well. He said that those objectified in pornography, become, in a certain sense, "public property." In "Bodies," people are paying money in order to see a public display of human persons, reduced merely to their body parts.
• Many attendees commenting on the "Bodies'" website have likened the exhibit to art. The use of naked bodies in the exhibit, often posed in rather disrespectful ways, bring to mind these words from Pope John Paul II, "Following his personal sensibility, man does not want to become an object for others through his own anonymous nakedness." Does this change after death? Suppose your mother or brother or best friend were one of the "models" in this exhibit? Would you be supportive of that? Why do we commend the use of anonymous people when we would be likely to condemn the use of people close to us?
• Those in the exhibit did not give consent. There are a host of ethical questions regarding the use of "unclaimed bodies" from a Communist country hardly renowned for human rights. Would these deceased people have wanted the world to see them as anonymous collections of body parts?
• In theology of the body, Pope John Paul II talks about the concept of shame. He says that shame is experienced after Original Sin in order to protect us from being used by another. We don't want to be seen naked by the public because we have an innate fear (rightfully so) of being used not loved. When a body is donated to science, it is done with free consent, presumably not for money and with the knowledge that those looking at the body have a certain purpose: Learning how to save other lives. The context must provide respect to the deceased person whose body has been donated for this cause. In "Bodies," there is no way to guarantee that the bodies will be looked on respectfully. People can gawk, stare, glare, comment and deride those featured in the exhibit without any care or protection from objectification given. This cannot be respectful of the human person, whether dead or alive.
• It is a good to learn how our bodies work, but I would argue that learning about anatomy or biology can be done apart from using human persons. With the millions of dollars pouring into Premier Exhibitions, one must question their motivation -- education or profit?
• Whenever we are in doubt that something is morally licit, we must lean toward caution. If we are unsure that "Bodies" is ethical and moral, then we should refrain from supporting it.

If you are looking to read more about this subject, check out Peter Bronson's op-ed in yesterday's Cincinnati Enquirer, a statement by the Archdiocese of Vancouver about a similar exhibit, and an article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.