Category: links elsewhere

Repeat after me: “Murder is Never the Solution”

UPDATE: Fr. says I had it right:

Actually, you are correct.  If you murder your spouse, you are not free to marry.  You are impeded due to the fact crime and public propriety come into play in this situation.  It does not matter if you murder your spouse or another person’s spouse.
See how much simpler it is to just ask your pastor, instead of the internet?  Ha.  I’m practically a Luddite.  (Have I mentioned my parish gets all the best priests?  We get all the best priests.)
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Original post:

 

That was us last night in 5th grade.  Because we were learning about Marriage.

–> And it appears I misquoted canon law, just a little.  Request for help at the bottom.

It was all going so nicely.  Marriage as one of the sacraments of service.  Husband and wife, till death do us part, open to children = new eternal souls, responsibility to educate those children, teach them right and wrong, introduce them to the church, teach them their faith . . . we were on it.

Naturally divorce came up, as it ALWAYS does, I don’t care how many times I don’t mention it even once.  But hey, no problem.  Quick explanation of nullity on the one part and separation of bed and board on the other, these kids were sharp.  No worries.  Off we launch into Holy Orders, when I my new favorite student raises her hand, and whispers, “I have one more question about marriage.”

Sure, no problem, go ahead sweetie.

“What if you murder your spouse because you don’t want to be married anymore.  Can you get married again after that?”

I should have just whispered “No,” and gotten back to bishops.   But I am not so smart.  I let the whole class in our little conversation.  Boys start howling, thrusting invisible knives at each other, thinking up little kitchen ‘accidents’ . . .

And hence the chant.  Repeat after me: “Murder is Never the Solution”.  Replace one boisterous activity with another.  It’s loud (I wonder if anyone is listening in the hall), but it’s focused.  Class back on track.  Quick let’s find those bishops again before someone starts the “Is it a mortal sin?” scenarios.

So that was our class last night.  [Great talk on Holy Orders.  Only excitement was another new question: “What if you don’t like your Deacon?” We all agreed: Suck it up, get along.  Disclaimer: Our parish has awesome clergy.  It was a hypothetical question. Nice talk about how every single sermon might not be written especially for you personally, some weeks it’s your turn to sit quietly and pray.  And if you were up there preaching, not everyone would be so excited about you either.  Get over yourself.  The kids *totally* get this.  Love it.]

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Anyhow, speaking of bishops, I’m not sure I sure I got my murder question quite right. Here is canon 1090, which seems to be the one I had imagined:

Can. 1090 §1. Anyone who with a view to entering marriage with a certain person has brought about the death of that person’s spouse or of one’s own spouse invalidly attempts this marriage.

§2. Those who have brought about the death of a spouse by mutual physical or moral cooperation also invalidly attempt a marriage together.

So this is all about murder in anticipation of a particular future marriage.  Doesn’t say anything about murder just to generally open up your options again.

Someone help me here.  Was I wrong?  (I think so).  Right enough? (For practical purposes, don’t think any little children were led wildly astray of the narrow road.)

Opine, opine.  I’ll ask Father just to be sure.

Lent.

From a baptist missionary family that has come to love Advent, and is now digging into Lent:

We decided to give the “Lent” thing a whirl.  We were the first to admit that like Christmas, Easter would sort of land on us.  We’d walk into church, our hearts unprepared, and then try and take in within one church service the complexities and rich beauty of the cross and the resurrection.  Impossible.  We left kind of numb.  Perhaps a tad-bit moved.  But mostly overwhelmed and feeling a little let down.  Just as celebrating Advent completely changed Christmas for us, taking the weeks prior to Easter to really savor the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection has been life changing.  The gospel.  God’s great love for this world.  Our sin.  Redemption.  Salvation.  This undeserved gift.  What medicine for the soul.

The more the Lent the more the Easter.  You can read the whole thing here. As they point out (repeating one of my favorite priests), it’s not too late to have a great Lent.

other people’s words

Hey, look I’m being like Dorian and outsourcing.  Because I’m teaching tonight, plus I was being responsible today (reduced goofing off), plus Christian LeBlanc e-mailed this link to an article of his on the origins of the French language.

So go read that.  It’s interesting.  And then if you’re still bored, you can come back here and click on the link to the Verb Conjugator (many, many languages offered) and entertain yourself with that for a while.  That’s what he was doing when he had the presence of mind to entertain me.

–> Try not to blush when your boss asks you what you’re doing, and you insist you were just, er, conjugating.  Oh yes, one of THOSE sites.  Sure.

40 pictures = 40,000 words?

Hey and here’s more good new media, h/t to Fr. V.  I think this one fits into that whole ignatian-imagination-meditation topic we were on the other month.  I never really thought about what 40 days in the desert really looked like, until someone drew me a picture:

 

And I tell you I don’t watch TV.  Ha.  Yes I do.

Underrated Media

Julie D. at Happy Catholic reminds us to promote catholic media today.  I’m lousy at these coordinated things — such an excess of self-discipline and order required.  My thought one week ago, as I lay in bed calculating the hours until midnight:  It’s not necessarily that I am a slave to my passions.  Sometimes I’m just a very reliable servant.

But often, yes, slave.

Rather than be organized, then, I’m going to just give you a few of my top favorite underrated blogs.   My list of well-known favorite catholic sites is in the sidebar.

Brandon at Siris is not only much smarter than me, he is also the true boy scout of internet-philosophers.  Here is where he answers my question about Intentio.

John McNichol barely blogs, but that’s because he is actually writing books.  Which I guess makes him “old media”, but gee, who else out there is taking care of catholic boys in need of more action/adventure novels? Do you really want your son glued to some blog, when he could be reading chestertonian steampunk instead?

Christian LeBlanc explains the catholic faith to sixth graders, which I suppose makes him too smart for the internet, too. But since most of us internet Catholics really need a proper sixth-grade religious education still, he posts his lessons on his site, and also links them to Sunday Snippets.

And my last under-rated catholic blog to promote today is my friend John Hathaway’s.  If St. Therese of Lisieux were a married American catholic man with Asperger’s and Marfan syndrome, who really dreamed of being a missionary priest to Haiti but instead was homeschooling his four kids, teaching college English, and doing all things lay-carmelite, that would be John.  You begin to see why I like the guy.  (And his wife, but she is too sensible and too busy to blog.)

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Speaking of underrated means and methods, here’s this bit of reflection is from a non-catholic blog, written by an evangelical missionary in Haiti, whose husband has been in prison for 5 months now.  Could just as easily be the wife of St. Thomas More writing here:

What? Huh?  Glory in suffering?  But you know what, it’s true.  One thing I’ve noticed is when you are suffering God doesn’t usually take the problem away immediately.  He’s not a magic wand to take away all your troubles.  You suffer and you suffer more when you are a Christian.  I have suffered so much in the past 5 months.  However I have noticed that thru my suffering I have changed, how I react has changed, and how I communicate has changed.

Read the whole thing here.

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Catholic Media Promotion Day facebook page is here.  You can make your list on your blog and then post the link on their wall, or just recommend some links directly on the wall.

Lent-o-rama: Please Advise

Bearing asks for advice on how to assist children with their lenten devotions:

. . . I was not a child growing up in a practicing-Catholic family.   I literally do not know how to encourage a Lenten devotion without becoming Lent Cop Mom.

Seriously.  Help me out here.  . . .

Since I know I have a few readers here who could answer this one, and because I want to know the answer too, please go read the whole thing and then inform us.

Thank you.

Orphans.

This morning when you woke up, you were thinking, “Gee, Jennifer needs to clean the house, takes the kids to dance class, drop by the church to return her very overdue books from the parish library and pester the DRE about something, maybe go downtown for one errand and the post office on three, and what she really really wants to do is go the garden center and pick out some drought-resistant plants for the flower beds.”

And furthermore, you were thinking, “I wish I knew more about problems facing orphans in Haiti.”

Perfect!  Here’s your article:  Complexity of Orphan Care, at Sit a Spell.

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After which, although you might be planning to take the Ironic Catholic’s advice and give up hand lotion or cinnamon for Lent, I suspect she’d approve if you’d squeeze in some prayers for orphans and their parents.

 

Wake up! Hey, Wake up!

That’s what my then two-year-old used to shout at his baby sister in the next seat when we arrived at our destination.  The parents were not amused.

These two articles might not amuse you, either.  But if you need to be really grumpy, these’ll do it.

–> I’m continuing with the regular-life-requires-my-attention-theme, so outsourcing my invective to ‘things that showed up in my inbox’.

From Christian LeBlanc, interesting link to an essay on contraception and the fall of the west.

The West lasted from AD 732, when Charles Martel defeated the Muslims at Tours, until 1960, where it fell without a battle. In 1960, the birth control pill became widely available. Many think of it as heaven, sexual nirvana, the route to self-expression, wish fulfillment, and liberation for millions of women. I think of it as Auschwitz in a bottle. It was and is genocide, as, using it, the women of my generation happily traded off 1,200 years of unparalleled growth, wealth, security, stability, scientific and ethical progress for a second BMW in the garage.

I’m not persuaded of author’s provocative conclusion (“Islam is the only way”), but the irony is there.  In the 19th century the French quit reproducing — yes, before effective contraception became widely available — and by the late 20th were wringing their hands over the cultural impact of all the muslims they’d imported to do the labor of the children they’d never had.  Germany has followed suit, and the US isn’t far behind.

(Though, luckily for our culture, we are importing truckloads of macho catholics with their awesome mariachi masses.  Maybe God does love us more?  Kidding.  Really.  The French have Brie — if that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.  But yes, I do like a rousing Spanish mass now and again.  Perks up the excessively-somber soul.   And as much as I am moved by the beauty and devotion of faithful muslims at worship, no, I can’t slip down to the corner mosque for a mini-revival.)

Anyhow, key point of link for me is this:  You can’t refuse to bear children, then get all shocked and horrified at the presence of the people you imported to do the work of the offspring you never had.  You want someone t0 mow your lawn and do your dishes?  Either rear yourself a pair of middle-schoolers, or hire someone else’s.

[Teenagers everywhere are now saying aha!  You really did raise me to be a slave! The mother points out that she does a thing or two for her own children that she doesn’t do for the random low-wage stranger.  Indeed, here may lie a bit of the problem: rather than a steady flow of youngsters who do the grunt work for a decade and then move on to greater work, we attempt to create a society divided between perpetual overlords and perpetual economic-teenagers.  And then are shocked, just shocked, when the daring, hard-working, self-sacrificing immigrants turn out to be just like our own children — ready to move up in the world after a spell.]

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Your other link is this article from the HSLDA, from Swedish parents who moved to Finland in order to homeschool.  I will use this as my cue to get off the internet educate a few fresh faces of my own.

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PS, castle news: We got a new roof.  Looks a lot like the old one, only much, much younger.

 

 

 

 

 

March 1 Last Day to Register for CWC Online

Catholic Writers’ Conference Online: It’s free, no-obligation, and exceedingly helpful even if all you do is drop in for one or two things the whole week.   Anyone is welcome, and you don’t have to be published or smart or talented or anything.  I haven’t seen this year’s schedule, but typically there are courses of interest for all abilities and types of writers.

Tomorrow is the participant registration deadline. So go sign-up ASAP if you haven’t already.