Two copies. Free from Ave Maria, as a tie-in to Sarah’s virtual book tour, which will be stopping at this blog on Monday October 8th. So how do you win a free copy?
Well, it doesn’t involve me mailing you things, that’s for sure. I got a call last week from the Office of Family Life at the Diocese of Charleston, saying, “Would you please help serve cookies after the Mass for Expectant Parents on October 14th in Columbia, SC?”
And I said, “Yes, I’ll be happy to do that, but only if you agree to give these books away, because it is much easier for me to turn up for mass someplace than for me to go to the post office.”
We think there might be pregnant people coming to that mass. Because the bishop will be giving the exceedingly cool Blessing for the Child in the Womb. But you can come put your name in the hat for the drawing, even if your plan is to win it for some other person who is pregnant, or who hopes to be, or who just likes to read fantabulous devotionals for Catholic pregnant ladies.
Also there’ll be an NFP table. And cookies. Did I mention cookies?
In which I belabor what ought to be an obvious point. Sheesh people. Okay, listen, I get the nervousness. You don’t want to do more harm than good. But seriously. It’s not. complicated. It’s not. Can you really look a kid in the face and say, “I’d hate to bother someone about this if it turns out you’re wrong?” You’d do that to your kid? No. Don’t do that to your kid. Call the police.
I just spent 3 days in the largest Catholic bookstore in the world. I bought one book. This is it:
Then I was stuck in an airport for five hours. Perfect timing.
What it is: Tiến Dương is a real guy about your age (born 1963) who is now a priest in the diocese of Charlotte, NC. Deanna Klingel persuaded him to let her tell his story, and she worked with him over I-don’t-know-how-long to get it right. Fr. Tien is a bit embarrassed to be singled out this way, because his story is no different from that of thousands upon thousands of his countryman. But as Deanna pointed out, if you write, “X,000 people endured blah blah blah . . .” it’s boring. Tell one story well, and you see by extension the story of 10,000 others.
The book is told like historical fiction, except that it’s non-fiction verified by the subject — unlike posthumous saints’ biographies, there’s no conjecture here. It’s what happened. The reading level is middle-grades and up, though some of the topics may be too mature for your middle-schooler. (Among others, there is a passing reference to a rape/suicide.) The drama is riveting, but the violence is told with just enough distance that you won’t have nightmares, but you will understand what happened — Deanna has a real talent for telling a bigger story by honing in on powerful but less-disturbing details. Like, say, nearly drowning, twice; or crawling out of a refugee camp, and up the hill to the medical clinic.
–> I’m going to talk about the writing style once, right now: There are about seven to ten paragraphs interspersed through the book that I think are not the strongest style the author could have chosen. If I were the editor, I would have used a different expository method for those few. Otherwise, the writing gets my 100% stamp of approval — clear, solid prose, page-turning action sequences, deft handling of a zillion difficult or personal topics.
Why “Most Important Book?”
This is a story that needs to be known. It is the story of people in your town and in your parish, living with you, today. And of course I’m an easy sell, because the books touches on some of my favorite topics, including but not limited to:
Economics
Politics
Diplomacy
Poverty
Immigration
Freedom of Religion
Freedom, Period
Refugee Camps
Cultural Clashes
Corruption
Goodness and Virtue
Faith
Priestly Vocations
Religious Vocations
Marriage and Family Life as a Vocation
Lying
Rape
Suicide
Generosity
Orphans
Welfare
Stinky Mud
Used Cars
Huggy vs. Not-Huggy
You get the idea. There’s more. Without a single moment of preaching. Just an action-packed, readable story, well told.
I’m here in Dallas (no one told me it was beautiful!) with a slooooow internet connection, so you’ll have to read somewhere else this week. No shortage of options.
Two brand new homeschooling blogs, written by internet friends of mine, that I think are worth a look:
Home Grown is by a Catholic mom of 1, and for all everyone sighs and moans at the sight of large homeschooling families, 1-child families have a dynamic that can be quite challenging for the stay-at-home parent. I love how Susan is up front about the problems she works through. Also, I wish I could write as beautifully as her 4th grader. There’s a reason this blog doesn’t include penmanship samples.
[And so that you’re warned, any snide comments about family size, and I’ll scratch your eyes out. You have no idea. No. idea.]
180 Days of Homeschool is by Amy, a mom of eight, ages baby to senior in high school. She’s been at this homeschooling thing for a while, and the day-by-day approach gives a nice realistic look at what it is homeschoolers really do all day. The other interesting thing for non-homeschoolers to note: by “homeschooling” what we often mean is “sending the kids to school, just not all day every day”. Amy has a few kids taking classes at a home-school school — think private Catholic school, but courses ordered a la carte, much more like college.
On the plane I started reading Grace in the Shadows by Denise Jackson. I read a lot of self-published books for the Catholic Writers’ Guild Seal of Approval process, so I am fully aware of the trepidation one feels in picking such a work. The content on this one is excellent. It’s part-memoir, part no-nonsense talk about the reality of sexual abuse, and how to move forward despite a miserable past. It has a very personal style (there’s poetry, for one thing) that you wouldn’t see in many traditionally-published books, so I’m glad Denise chose to stick to her guns and write it the way she thought it needed to be told.
At the halfway point, I’m giving it a ‘buy’ recommend for anyone who has the job of creating a safe environment for preventing abuse, or has the vocation of being the friend of a sexual abuse survivor. Denise Jackson has a very mature, well-balanced Christian spirituality, and what has fascinated me as I read is seeing how many of the patterns of behavior and emotion surrounding sexual abuse are in fact the same patterns you see in many other situations. Great book. I can’t wait to finish it.
I would like to thank all of you who have prayed for me. I’m lousy at praying, but I do pray for my benefactors, and that would be you. Because your work has been, thus far, very effective. I would like to double-thank those who have been patient in practical matters as my attendance at this or that has been spotty.
2.
Tuesday morning I learned a friend had been deceiving me for some time. Not lying, not outright. She’d made a (perfectly legitimate) decision that she knew I wouldn’t like. She put off telling me, presumably in the hopes it would simply never become an issue. That I wouldn’t, in the end, need to know after all.
2468 Truth as uprightness in human action and speech is called truthfulness, sincerity, or candor. Truth or truthfulness is the virtue which consists in showing oneself true in deeds and truthful in words, and in guarding against duplicity, dissimulation, and hypocrisy.
What began as prudence and discretion, looking for the right moment to share the news I needed to know, turned into a lack of candor as the months dragged out. Sometimes I worry about doing the same thing. Is there something I should be saying, and haven’t? It is easy enough to be misunderstood. It is possible to deceive without intending to, without any sin at all.
3.
2469 “Men could not live with one another if there were not mutual confidence that they were being truthful to one another.”262 The virtue of truth gives another his just due. Truthfulness keeps to the just mean between what ought to be expressed and what ought to be kept secret: it entails honesty and discretion. In justice, “as a matter of honor, one man owes it to another to manifest the truth.”263
Even when I am trying to be prudent, to actually shut up and think for a change, there’s always the wondering. Does someone truly need to know this thing I know? Will I be more guilty for speaking, or for not?
5.
2483 Lying is the most direct offense against the truth. To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has the right to know the truth. By injuring man’s relation to truth and to his neighbor, a lie offends against the fundamental relation of man and of his word to the Lord.
So I was composing this post in my head this morning before mass. After, I had the privilege of being outright lied to, in a mortal-sin kind of way, if my fact-checking turns out to be correct. (Completely different scenario, different people.) It was . . . very strange.
But it happens. People do evil things. People who are kind and generous and pious sometimes do evil things.
6.
Why do Mark Shea and Chris Tollefsen get told off every time they point out lying is wrong? I think it’s because we’re so used to it.*
We have a cultural fear of the truth. Faced with a difficult thing to say about even the most trivial matter, we tend to look for away to skirt the truth. How can I get my girlfriend to purchase a different outfit, without telling her this one she loves makes her look awful / is terribly tacky / is exactly the one I’m wearing to the same event?
We are so used to thinking of deceit as necessary for police work, or some similar situation, that it is unimaginable, truly unthinkable, that it might, possibly, be the wrong thing to do. We so fear harming innocent children or the frail elderly with difficult facts, that I’ve been accused of great cruelty for suggesting that such people can, in fact, be given difficult but necessary news in some sensitive but honest way.
7.
And it cannot be denied: the moral life is not the easier life. The freedom truth brings is bought at a cost. A willingness to risk not nabbing the criminal, of making the little girl cry for the rest of her life, of causing grandma’s heart to fail. Or a boycott by angry customers. Or martyrdom.
Mostly, doing what is right is also doing what feels better. What, in the end, makes like easier. Our conscience is clear, our friendships are solid, people want to work with and help others they know to be decent, honest folk. Mostly.
Not always.
Don’t forget to pray for Allie Hathaway, then go read more takes at the home of our lovely hostess Jen F. at ConversionDiary.com.
*Not telling them off. Lying. Though we’re also getting used to telling them off. Curiously, my Mark Shea link has no negative comments on it, at this writing.
Over at the Catholic Writers Guild blog, I just queued up a good troll-baiting guest post (Not mine! For once I’m mostly innocent!) to go live first thing in the morning. And I gave our regularly-scheduled bloggers a private talking-to about how EASY it is to write on this topic. So we’ll see how they do.
I’m going to keep this post sticky for the next two weeks, so if you post something on the theme of freedom, or have an on-topic link you’d like to share, feel free to put it in this combox.
Why is Church teaching worth standing up for? I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you about the Theology of the Body Conference in upstate SC this summer – July 6th & 7th. I won’t make it out this year — I’ll be home attending a wedding, yay! — but I was able to go to Family Honor’s TOTB conference in 2002, and it was top notch. Speakers this year include Janet Smith & Ray Guarendi . . . you can’t go far wrong with talent like that. Check it out.
Hey and if you ever wondered where my header and sidebar photos came from . . . yeah, upstate SC has a few little secrets in those mountains. Good place.
Via The Pulpit I discovered this great article at Catholic Lane on the morality of genetic enhancements: “Catholic Confusion on Enhancements” which is worth a read. I’d never considered the question one way or another (we have no genes we are particularly keen to improve — want of ambition, as always), and now I know. It’s not confusing at all — the Catholic teaching comes down to the old standby, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
But the cries of, “But I just . . . can’t . . . figure this out . . .” are so familiar. It’s the line used to justify ignoring all the most obnoxious moral principles:
Torture: I can’t tell whether I’m really torturing someone or not — I guess I’ll just keep at it.
Theft: Is taking this one small thing really theft? Who knows — just don’t tell anyone and it’ll be okay.
Lying: Is it really a lie, or am I just being deceptive? Well it’s a good cause, so why worry?
You might also recall willful confusion was used back in the day for abortion — is this really a baby? — but now everyone knows it’s a baby, we just don’t worry about the very little ones no one much wants, that would be absurd. Like worrying about little white lies and tax evasion and torturing people who surely deserved it anyway.
The most entertaining sort of pseudo-confusion is about NFP. Seriously, I kid you not, people will say with a straight face things like:
“I don’t understand how NFP and contraception are different.” Um, the part about not having sex, maybe?
“But what’s the difference between using chemicals or latex to prevent conception, versus using time to prevent it?” I think if you can’t tell the difference between sex and abstinence . . . you’re doing it wrong.
These are excuses. No one who is serious about avoiding immoral genetic manipulation, or torture, or theft, or lying, or contraception, asks these questions.
Excuses are different from honest inquiry. When people are really trying to find out answers, they act differently. Honest inquirers ask precise questions: Not, “I can’t know whether taking office supplies is stealing, I’ll help myself to this case of pencils,” but “Is it okay to make personal phone calls from the office phone? I’ll e-mail the new boss and find out what the policy is.” And then are prepared to accept difficult answers: If the policy is no personal calls, I’ll wait and call later.
Excuses are different from honest mistakes. A very, very common honest mistake is believing that the withdrawal method is a legitimate and morally acceptable form of NFP. It isn’t. But between some going jokes (now dated, but these things persist), the fact that no artificial devices or chemicals are involved, and the the insidious feeling that anything with as low an effectiveness rating as the rhythm method* must be okay, people get the wrong idea.
The answer is no — a very rough approximation of Catholic sexual morality would be more along the lines of “Don’t start what you aren’t gonna finish.” The difference between the honest mistake and faux “confusion” is that the honest man might grumble about being corrected, but he won’t sit there acting like he can’t tell the difference between select body parts and a hole in the ground.
*Withdrawal and the Rhythm Method are both somewhat effective for avoiding pregnancy, though I wouldn’t want to bet on them myself. The one is immoral, the other is not. History buff though I am, when it comes to having babies, or not having them, give me nice shiny modern NFP over the quaint forbears any day.
Today I give you seven reasons parishes, schools, and families ought to consider making some specific rules to define modest dress.
1. Modest is not only about interior disposition. I refer you, for a start, to this excellent post by Rebecca Frech on how guys are different from girls. Can a guy work himself into a sweat just imagining things? Certainly. But that doesn’t change the reality that having a woman’s body in front of his eyes provokes a physiological response — the same way putting a plate of fresh-baked brownies in front of a girl makes her . . . well, you know. Put the brownies away. Away. Please. Now.
2. You have to get dressed. Everyday. Modesty is not some abstract principle debated by philosophers and mathemeticians. Girls have to choose what clothes to buy, and then which ones to wear in which combination. This is not some theoretical exercise, like wondering what you’ll do if a hurricane should hit your corner of North Dakota. Either the clothes you put on today are modest, or they are not. You have to know.
3. It’s not fair to leave girls with nothing but judgement calls, and no hope of getting it right. Yes, there are many, many classy outfits on the border between modest and not. At home with mom, or in the fitting room with a trusted friend, you can say, “Yeah, that skirt’s a smidge short, but it’s a heavy fabric that won’t fly away, and with opaque tights and a sweater, you’re okay.” Given how hard it is to find decent clothes on short notice and a tight budget, yes, this is sometimes the reality.
But what if you’re a teen who wants to get it right? Girls deserve reliable guidelines — a set of simple tactics for choosing an outfit that will work. It’s no fair to tell teens “cultivate a sense of modesty,” but refuse to tell them what they need to do in order to avoid being gossiped about prayed for by the ministry team. Modesty isn’t hard. 99% of the time, if you follow a few basic rules suitable to your time and place, you’re gonna be good.
4. Clear rules help you better judge the judgement calls. Fashion is weird and unpredictable. Pretend for a moment you have a rule along the lines of “skirt needs to touch the knees”. Just pretend with me, it won’t hurt. It’s only pretend.
Okay, so we’re pretending about our rule . . . and now we have a skirt with a slit up the side. Having already said, “Well, this much leg is okay, that much is too much,” we have a basis for deciding whether the slit is revealing or just convenient. How does it compare with other skirts we’ve decided are A-OK?
5. Clear rules end arguments. If you’re the youth minister charged with deciding whether an outfit meets spec, you don’t have to use your imagination. You can say, “Shoulders not covered. Go grab a t-shirt from the supply closet. Not my rule, parish policy.” End of argument.
At home, of course, you have to admit you’re the bad guy and just stick to your guns. And of course your daughter is going to try to negotiate all the stylish concessions she can. But at least she can shop knowing that no matter how obnoxiously tacky you think the new sequins-and-puff-balls day-glow-bubble-skirt style is, if it’s below the knee and not too tight, and she buys it with her own money, you have to let her wear it somewhere. Not necessarily anywhere you, your family, or your nationality are known. But somewhere.
6. Clear rules give girls something to stand on against their friends. It’s not easy to be that kid who doesn’t get to wear what everyone else is wearing. Yes, of course girls ought to have lots of guts and inner convictions, and be totally unafraid to stand up to their idiotic “friends” and get new ones if necessary. Yes, of course a girl should rather face death itself than ever utter a single word against her honorable, admirable, eminently reasonable parents. But seriously? Give the poor kid an easy out. “It’s the dress code for youth group events,” or “My parents have a rule against it.”
7. Clear rules sharpen the debate. So your right-wing fanatic friend (or pastor, or DRE) swears that exposed ankles are the first step on the way to Hell, and that many a collarbone had led a man to perdition. Putting together a tentative list of rules, and then opening it up to scrutiny, helps better answer the question. You can flip through photos from the parish picnic and say, “Look, Sister Immaculata is showing some calf and it’s okay. Let’s up our hemline rule a few inches, I think the guys can take it.”
You have to get dressed. Every day, every woman in the universe answers a question with her body: “I think this outfit is just fine.” Why not do it with the confidence? Make some rules. Ask for input. Try them out. Adjust as needed.
