One of the news sources I flip through occasionally is Al Jazeera. It’s not the only place I’d turn for information (goodness gracious!), but for coverage of Middle Eastern politics it’s a bit more thorough than the average American paper, go figure. Al Jazeera also has good human rights coverage sometimes, such as this investigation into Britian’s modern-day slave trade. Catholics are big into human rights.
The most painful fallacy I see among Catholics is the false dichotomy between “social justice” and “life issues.” It’s moldering baggage from the Church’s political divisions over the last fifty years or so: We know that a branch of dissenting Catholics labeled themselves “social justice” warriors, and so our alarm bells go off whenever we hear someone talking in vague terms about peace and justice and not much clear doctrine.
We have to cut this out.
Catholics who believe the entirety of the Catholic faith are not obliged to hand over a portion of our faith to agnostics-in-Catholic-clothing. We get to own the whole package: the Trinity, the Church, the Sacraments, Scripture, and the entire Christian moral life. We don’t have to settle for our slice of the “pelvic issue” pie and doggedly shun any topic we fear might have somehow, somewhere, been enjoyed by a Democrat. We certainly don’t have to swallow the line that justice with regards to immigrants, the environment, workers, prisoners, or any other category popular on the Left can thereby only be solved by the Left.
CHARLOTTE, NC — A new App called Nurx ensures sex traffickers, abusive relatives and overbearing boyfriends are not burdened by complicated encounters with health care professionals, while ensuring that the girls who service them never, ever, meet a physician, nurse, or clinic work who might intervene and contact the authorities.
“If a teenage girl is engaging in a behavior that has potentially life-threatening consequences, that’s not something her parents need to know about,” the health care provider explained. “It’s better just to give her a medication with known fatal side effects without ever consulting a physician in person.”
Critics have questioned whether teenagers are able to reliably choose their own prescription medications, but teachers and school administrators all agreed in an industry consensus statement, “If there’s one thing we can say about teenagers, it’s that they are reliable, diligent, and filled with a deep sense of personal responsibility.”
The document went on to say, “No teenager would ever lie on a form on the internet. Sexual predators don’t ever use fake identities on the internet either. So this is completely not a public health concern.”
“We care about girls’ reproductive health and freedom,” a public health official observed. “Many girls have said they’d ‘rather die’ then let their parents know what they’re doing. Nurx is here to make that possible for them.”
I like France. I like France very, very much. More epic vacation blogging to prove that point is coming soon — meanwhile I hope you are enjoying Erin Arlinghaus’s reports from Chamonix. But there are few related bits of French culture that are astonishing to Americans, or should be. An interview with Gabrielle Deydier helped pull all those threads together for me, and will hopefully help other Americans appreciate a strong difference between American and French culture.
Gabrielle Deydier is fat.
That’s radical, because being fat is not something French people do very much.
I know this, because one of things I’ve been meaning to mention here in my collection of vacation blog posts is that if you are a plus-sized person, you need to plan ahead when traveling in France. For example, of our various accomodations during our trip, most of the bathrooms were very spacious — larger than a typical American bathroom. One, though, in a perfectly reputable non-chain hotel, was tiny like you’d find in the smallest of travel trailers. A bathroom so small you’d be wishing for that giant powder room they had in coach on your flight across the Atlantic. It’s just assumed that the people coming to the hotel are thin people.
This worked out well for us, because my rail-thin children could go shopping and buy clothes that fit them, which we don’t get to do in the US very much. But not everybody comes in extra-extra-slim, so if you are planning a trip to France and space needs are a concern, that’s something you want to find out before you make reservations. Seriously: Ask for measurements in the room you are booking. (If you’re tall: Ask them to measure the length of the bed, if it isn’t given in the room description. Inquire about ceiling height in the shower as well. And remember, every room is different in a non-chain French hotel or B&B.)
So back to Ms. Deydier. Her book is called You’re Not Born Fat, and it chronicles the shocking amount of open prejudice and insult she has received as a fat person trying to live and make a living in France. She literally lost her job as a teaching assistant after a month of harassment about her weight — harassment that came from the teacher she worked with, who openly mocked and criticized her in front of the students. She writes about the lengths the French will go to in order to be thin, including a huge and sometimes-deadly bariatric-surgery industry. As she writes for Le Parisien, the rate of suicide among those who undergo surgery is double that of those who do not.
If you wish to understand this mania, spend in a little time in the mind of America in the 1950’s.
Keeping Up Appearances
A good friend of mine from high school in France (who later struggled with anorexia in college) came to visit me in the US. We toured around a bit, and of everywhere she visited, my grandparents’ home was where she felt most at ease. She described them as being “like the French.” My grandparents are not French. But my grandparents were model 1950’s Americans. They lived by the etiquette book. Every bit of bourgeois conventionality youngsters rebelled against in the late 1960’s my grandparents embodied in every fiber of their being.
The French, you see, put a very high value on appearances.
Consider adultery, for example. It is widely accepted as a part of life, so much so that there is even a specific time of day devoted to it. But discretion in the rule. The hacking of Ashley Madison was a disaster, because it broke of the rule of don’t-ask-don’t-tell. Lifelong marriage is highly valued, but “fidelity” is about maintaining the family home and unity in public life, not about who sleeps with whom. Your wife’s children are your children, and it’s illegal to get a paternity test showing otherwise without a court order.
Between 1946 and 1967, the number of people with disabilities that were housed in public institutions in America increased from almost 117 000 to over 193 000, a population increase that was almost double that of the general post-war “baby boom”. As time went on, those admitted were becoming younger and their disabilities more pronounced. In regards to Down syndrome in particular, there were many cases where fathers and doctors conspired to have a baby institutionalized and then told the mother that the baby had died.
Now, of course, we just abort them. The French do as we do, but with the French twist of not permitting any reproachful reminders that there were better choices. Smoothing things over is the highest goal.
Cover art courtesy of Amazon.fr. FYI a good source for French-language books if you wish to order online for shipment to the US is Decitre.Fr. They don’t have this particular book in stock in paper right now, though.
I wish to thank you for your extraordinary comments to Professor Barrett, in whom, you assure us all, the dogma loudly lives. (May that be said of all Notre Dame’s faculty one day, please God.)
The reason I wish to thank you is because, like most people, I have some things I believe to be true. I also have children, most of whom are now teenagers. Teenagers do this thing that’s necessary for the good of the species, but aggravating all the same: They question the beliefs of their parents.
I would like them, for example, to believe with all their heart that texting and driving is always to be avoided because it poses a serious danger to themselves and others. I think that’s true, I assume you do as well, and since one day my children might be sharing the road with you, we both have a strong interest in their coming to accept that belief and act on it. You might say that you and I are dogmatic on that point.
Another thing I’d like them to accept with all their heart is the Catholic faith. That’s something that probably isn’t so easy for you to understand. See, here’s the difficulty with kids these days: They don’t fake religious beliefs in order to get along and smooth their social paths. Back when you were a kid? Yeah, people did that. They might be Catholic because it was their family heritage, or they found the communal life appealing, but without necessarily feeling that they had to accept the entirety of the Catholic faith as being exactly true. I think you work with some people who are like that.
But we of the younger generations don’t do fake-religion so much. There are a few holdouts, of course, but for the most part, if a young adult these days practices a religion, it’s because he or she thinks it is true. That’s especially so for Catholics, because in many circles (yours, for example), there’s no real social benefit to being Catholic. Sometimes it even kinda sucks. (In a join-your-sufferings-with-Christ kinda way, don’t get me wrong . . ..)
So, like many Catholic parents, even though I try my best to pass onto my children the things that I think are true — both about road safety and the reality of human existence in a larger way — I am well aware that my kids might choose to reject my beliefs. And though they might lie and say they don’t text and drive even if they do (please God no), they probably won’t get around to lying about being Catholic, at least not after they’ve moved on to college.
And that’s why I want to thank you. See, my boy is a senior in high school, and like many boys he doesn’t always share his inner thoughts with the world. I don’t always have a clear read on what he thinks about the Catholic faith. But this morning?
I showed him the video of you making your famous quote. He laughed so hard at how ridiculous you were — it was truly a wonderful moment for a mother to share with her son. We made jokes about “dogma” and a little bit of woofing sounds (which got our actual dog excited and after that she stood at the door all day watching for squirrels because she could tell we knew dogs were important), and also he joked about “those dangerous Christian religious extremists refusing to kill people!”
It was a really fun time for the two of us. It was also a moment when I knew that my boy understood a person should act on his or her beliefs. Otherwise they aren’t really much in the way of beliefs, are they?
So thank you very much for giving us that little gift.
I wish you all the best,
Jennifer.
PS: My son also thought you looked drunk. But you weren’t, I don’t think. He really hasn’t spent that much time around either senators or drunk people, so he’s not necessarily the best judge.
Photo via United States Congress, US Senate Photo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Today the encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite woman came around in the readings again. I once heard a deacon preach that this incident just shows that Jesus was “human” like the rest of us, where “human” is code for “sinful.”
I don’t think so, sir.
Back in 2014, I wrote a bit of Gospel fan fiction, taking the words of Scripture verbatim, but filling out the details Scripture doesn’t supply. Everyone does this when they read, and sometimes our fill-in-the-blanks interpretations are justified and sometimes they are not. I wrote a follow-up post on why I hold with the Jesus is Not a Jerk Thesis. I still hold with that reasoning:
Thus when the infamous quote comes around full circle in conversation with the Canaanite woman and his disciples, we have a Jesus who:
Is master of the Law, not slave of it.
Has praised the faith of pagans.
Has spoken of the redemption of the very region they are now standing in.
Has willingly and freely healed non-Jews.
And has said that perseverance in prayer is desirable.
Were I writing that same story today, I wouldn’t write it the way I wrote it back then. Today my mind is on the idea of racism, and for the reasons I summarize above (see the original post for more details), I tend to view this encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite woman as the counterpart to what today we would call an anti-racist moment. Jesus has been attempting, through word and action, to teach his disciples that salvation is for the whole world.
They will eventually get that message (“neither Jew nor Greek”), but they haven’t got it yet.
Here they are being asked to heal someone’s daughter of a demon. A demon, guys! This is serious, serious trouble, and it’s the kind of trouble that elite religious healing-commando people ought to be on the job taking care of. Instead they say: Send her away. She’s bugging us.
What exactly do you do with people whose hearts are so hardened?
Give them another talk? You can only give so many talks.
Our Lord, being fully God, had the ability to know this Canaanite woman. He had the ability to know how she would react under pressure, and what sorts of things would wound her and which would not.
People are cured of their bigotry only when they get to see the world through the eyes of the person they’ve pushed off and objectified. The disciples would have happily dismissed the woman as some noisy, intrusive, undeserving gentile. Jesus says what needs to be said — he verbalizes what they are thinking — so they can see how unjust it is, and they can see in her response how deserving of their respect she is.
Here’s something interesting about the social media reaction to the racist violence and demonstrations in Charlottesville: People felt the need to assert that racism is wrong.
It was a specific kind of assertion: Not just anger or frustration or sadness, though there was that. Rather, there were many assertions that seemed to be purely about the need to affirm that yes, in fact this is evil.
Contrast this with, say, the announcement (I saw several over the past few days) that someone’s child had died of a terrible accident or illness. Those announcements spur people to offer their prayers and condolences, and often in the wake of certain kinds of deaths there will be some venting of how much we hate suicide or drowning or cancer or whatever the source of the problem was. There might, later at a less sensitive time, be links shared on how to cope with that problem or ways to prevent it in the future.
But no one feels the need to wave a flag saying, “Guys! Drowning is bad!” or “Cancer isn’t glamorous!” or “It’s time we put aside our love of fatal traffic accidents!” There are no links to inspiring stories about people who campaigned to persuade the world that being crushed in a landslide is in fact undesirable. There will be no hopeful mention of the man who used to just love the prospect of dying from massive burns and smoke inhalation, but thanks to a profound change of heart, he now realizes that’s not what people should want out of life.
These evils are self-evident. You might disagree over the extent to which they can or should be avoided (close all the mountain passes!), but you don’t disagree that these things are bad.
***
People can’t shut up about the evil of racism because it is still a pressing topic for them.
Perhaps your friend who daily asserts that skin color doesn’t matter can remember a time when he did think it mattered. Maybe he wasn’t that bad, but he was bad enough. He looked down on people of other races, or he felt that somehow his own people were superior, or that there was some justification for certain types of discrimination. Maybe he theoretically believed in human equality, but in practice he felt that most people of this or that race were not, in practice, as educated and moral and generally deserving as people of his own race. Maybe he still struggles to shake off the vestiges of prejudice.
Or perhaps your other friend grew up in an openly racist culture (if she’s old enough, she almost certainly did), and she still has memories of segregation and overt discrimination. Maybe she remembers the callous things some people used to say, and the downright mean things other people used to do.
And perhaps that other group of friends who are always asserting racism is wrong are doing it not because it has ever been an issue for them, personally, but because they are regularly encountering people who are racist. Maybe they see racism in action. Maybe they overhear racist comments. Maybe they get into arguments with others who try to make the case for racism.
***
This is why people post those memes. The repetition grows tiresome for us who aren’t at that point. We don’t need anti-racist reminders anymore than we need reminders that air should have oxygen and diesel fuel doesn’t belong on your drinks table. We wish you would quit posting pictures of different-colored kittens all snuggled up together in a display of racial solidarity, and get back to sharing the plain old non-polemical kittens for which the internet was invented.
But we’ll be patient. Because if you are a recovering racist, or you spend your day with not-yet-recovering racists, maybe you need an outlet. If Solidarity Kittens help you, then please: Be helped.
*** In the making of this post, I looked through many kitten photos on Wikimedia, because I’m committed to social justice that way. Other things you might like to know about:
Simcha Fisher has a nice article up on slacktivism, virtue-signalling, and all the rest. But she doesn’t post a single kitten picture, so not only is she using the Internet wrong, she obliges me to put a second kitten picture in my post (below) in order to keep cyberspace properly balanced so it doesn’t implode from misuse.
My latest at the National Catholic Register touches on some interesting bits of French culture where marriage is concerned. I didn’t have room in a short essay to create an annotated bibliography, and anyway I stumbled on more interesting stuff than I’ll ever write about. Here’s a list of assorted links of potential interest to select readers, with a few comments at the bottom related to my essay topic.
D. AUX CHEFS DE FAMILLE
24 – Chers chefs de famille, votre place n’est plus à démontrer, et votre responsabilité est capitale. L’impact de votre action peut être positif ou négatif, selon que vous agissez conformément ou non à la volonté de Dieu. Il vous donne de prendre soin des personnes qu’il vous confie. Votre mission est à la fois honorable et complexe. C’est sur vous que repose la cohésion de la famille, en matière de dot, de gestion d’héritage et de conflits, de traitement des veuves, des veufs et des orphelins. Dans cet ordre d’idées, à la lumière de la tradition et de l’Evangile, nous dénonçons la pratique illégale qui consiste à demander une dot trop élevée. Respectez ce que prévoit le code de la famille (art. 140). Nous condamnons la pratique du mariage posthume (versement de la dot lors du décès de la conjointe). Appliquez-vous avec courage, avec toute votre force, à accomplir dignement votre mission de chef de famille.
Nous vous assurons, de notre soutien, de notre proximité, de notre prière et de notre bénédiction.
The context is not (at all whatsoever) the French civil law on posthumous marriage. Rather, the bishops are condemning the practice of asking too high of a dowry, and therefore also the practice of “posthumous marriage” as a vehicle for receiving the payment of the dowry when the bride has died.
By way of comparison on the topic of the French civil code’s practice of posthumous marriage, here’s the Code of Canon Law on the topic of “radical sanation,” which is something completely different. It’s of interest because it shares the concept of “going back in time and fixing things” where marriage is concerned. And that’s it — no other connection between the two.
I searched on “French Family” and the results came up Dutch. Thanks Wikimedia!
This spring, #3 and I have been volunteering about three times a month at either the shower-in-laundry place or the homeless-people clothing closet. At S&L we move laundry through the machines, clean showers between users, keep track of who’s in line for a shower next, and make sure the supplies are in order. At the HPCC, we’re back-end. Elderly ladies with a firm disposition for taking no nonsense deal directly with the client; we naive pushovers sort through donations, take a look at the current inventory and decide what to send on to outlying ministries, and get the rest logged in and put away.
This is enjoyable work for many reasons.
It is relaxing. You set aside all your other worries and just focus for a couple hours on getting a useful and manageable task accomplished.
It is companionable. The other volunteers and the clients are interesting, fun people to be with. For my daughter and me, it’s something we can do together, and we end up working more and more as a team.
It is satisfying. You never wonder, “Did that guy really need a shower?” Yes. He needed a shower. You made it possible for him to have one. Done. Likewise, no one comes and asks someone else’s grandmother to pick out second-hand shoes and clothes for them unless they really, truly, need some shoes and clothes.
It is refreshing. After you’ve waded through enough sophisticated blather over the years from non-homeless people, it’s nice to be around people who have no particular social skills. They just want a shower and some shoes, done. We don’t ask you to listen to a talk about Higher Things or make a promise that you’ll never drink and you’ll always work really hard. We just tell you when the shower’s ready.
It is edifying. Here are friends joking together, family members proud of each other, worried about each other, looking after each other, telling stories about each other — all this beautiful humanity in front of your face. Everyone has a story of home, even when home is outside.
All these things I love. But there’s something that keeps moving me most, week after week: The generosity of total strangers.
This week we had to stop off at St. Urban’s on the way to S&L. “Oh, by the way, tell them down there we’ve got a pile of stuff the Sodality of Mary collected.” #3 & I took a look at the pile, determined it would fit in our freshly-emptied front seat, and brought it ourselves.
This whole stack of things was exactly what S&L needed. Late in the afternoon, after the waiting area had emptied, we sorted through the stuff to put away. You have toothbrushes or lotion or shampoo, and you go to put it away, and discover the amount on the counter is the right amount to fill the gap on the supply shelves. Here’s something we almost ran out of, but church ladies took up a collection and now we have it, just when we need it.
***
Every week when we’re pouring detergent or spraying disinfectant or setting a few more miniature bars of soap in the bin by the towels, we’re holding someone else’s generosity. None of that stuff comes from grants or government-supply. It’s all collected a piece at a time by people all over the city who’ve gone through the trouble of gathering supplies together and getting them delivered.
Imagine having the job of opening and delivering 500 hundred Valentines a week. Then imagine that they weren’t love letters between boyfriend and girlfriend or parent and child, but rather each one said:
Dear Person Who Matters to Me,
I’ve never met you, I know your life sucks and people don’t want to be around you and some of it might even be your own fault, but I’m glad you’re here in my town with me. I care about you, and I want to make your life a little bit better, and I want you to know you are not alone.
Love,
Your Secret Friend.
If you got to catalog and count and deliver box after box of that sort of love?
Nah, I don’t think so. When you meet Phil, one of the things that stands out is that he almost certainly has miserable health problems. A lot of the clients have that look. From the way Phil has trouble walking, you might guess, for example, that he’s got a spinal injury or something.
Something else you notice after spending a little time in the same room, and getting to wash his clothes and to observe the care he puts into straightening himself up at the shaving sink, is that this is a guy who cares about his appearance. He knows odds are against him, and he’s making the effort. He doesn’t want to be that unkempt crazy street person.
No one who comes into the shower-laundry does. That’s why they come.
So today from my post at the machines I notice the odd whiff of urine-fresh-scent, and it seems to pick up when Phil walks by, and sure enough when I glance over at him sitting waiting his turn for a shower, evidence is he either dropped a cup of water in his lap or he’s the guy.
He does what any sane person would do in his position: He stays cool and pretends it didn’t happen. Maybe no one will notice. Maybe people will think he spilled his ice water.
What else is he going to do? In a minute he’s going to be able to shower and put his clothes in the wash and take care of the situation, but until then he’s stuck. And I’m telling you: Phil is not a guy who wants to be sitting there with wet pants. He just isn’t. He hates it as much as you would.
***
Here are two things about being homeless:
You have to scratch together every bit of help from seven different places.
Poverty doesn’t wait until you’re ready for it.
When people with good stiff bootstraps visualize homelessness, they visualize a weekend with the Boy Scouts. Be hard-working and resourceful! No-match fires and a foraged meal? Sure! Except of course that if the Scouts went on a camping trip but you were in no condition to go, your mother made you stay home.
Poverty doesn’t check to see if you’re feeling well.
If you are homeless or nearly, depending on your area there may well be help for you with food and clothing, with shelter if you can get along in a group, and sporadically with medical care and so forth. I’m not aware of any programs that stock incontinence supplies. I checked our supply shelves — we don’t. You have to have cash to cover that one.
That stuff’s expensive. Price it yourself — everyone pays out of pocket, not just homeless people. There’s a lot of help to be had for homeless people, but none of it involves handing out cash. So if the problem’s new or infrequent, financially the calculus may well lean heavily towards hoping that if you have an accident it happens right before you go in to get your weekly shower.
*Heck no, I’m not telling you people’s private business. All names and identifying info are totally changed.
Artwork: The Dressing Table, 1879, Gribkov. Via Wikimedia [Public Domain].
If you’re going to the March for Life, local or national, you are going to end up with a sign. If you don’t bring one, helpful people will give you one, and then you’ll have to carry it. Or you could go ahead and make the best sign ever: It’s lightweight, compact, easy to carry, and will keep you warm if the weather behaves like January tends to behave.
Bonus: It isn’t any more difficult to make than a regular posterboard sign.
Fleece March for Life Banner Instructions
What you’ll need:
Approximately one yard of fleece fabric. If you have an old blanket you want to re-purpose, that works too. Err on the side of choosing a solid color unless you’re really good at visual design.
Fabric paint and stencils, or some other way to write your slogan on your banner. Go with something that will contrast with your fabric.
A length of rope a foot or two longer than the width of your fabric. A walking stick would work, too.
Needle & thread, a sewing machine, or a bunch of safety pins.
Step 1: Think up your slogan. Since your banner will roll up into a teeny tiny slot in your scarf stash, you’ll use it again in future years. So pick something simple and enduring. Yes: “Don’t Kill Innocent People.” No: “Please Pass Prop 37 on July 16th, 2012.” My then-six-year-old came up with Abortion is Bad for our local March, but half a decade later the girls chose the much more subtle Babies are People when we went to the big March in DC. I Regret My Abortion and Suicide is Never the Answer are good ones too.
Step 2: Hem or pin your fabric. Lay out your rectangle of fleece, then fold over the top edge of the future sign. Stitch or pin the folded-over edge so that you have a slot for your length of rope or stick. Tip: If you’re using rope, it’s a pain to work it through the slot after you’ve stitched. Go ahead and lay it in place before you sew.
Step 3: Add your slogan. If it’s easier (depending on how you are attaching your letters) you can do the slogan before you sew up the slot for the stick, but pre-plan so you don’t end up with your slogan cut off. You can see below we ended up precariously close to the hem.
Step 4: There is no step four. This is a very easy project.
You can improve on the original design by not making it at the last minute the night before you march. Everyone loves house guests who bring along unannounced DIY projects.
Using Your Banner
While you are marching,sign-holding children (or adults, if you must) stand on either side of the banner and hold the ends of the rope. Note that if you have many small children to keep track of, you can make a longer rope and they can all hold on and make a train. You can tie a hand loop in either end; if your hands are full, you can use a carabiner to clip your end to your belt loop, backpack, stroller, etc. If you used polyester fleece, you’ve got an extremely lightweight sign that doesn’t blow you over like a shipwreck if the wind gusts.
If you get tired of carrying the sign, drape it over your shoulders like a cape, stash it in the baby’s stroller, or stuff it in your backpack. It’s lightweight and compact.
If you get cold, wrap up in your sign for warmth.
If you have to sit on the ground during 5,000 speeches, your sign is also a blanket.
If the baby is breastfeeding,you can use the sign to cover that dreadful gap by your waist you failed to anticipate, and which does not feel invigorating outside in the cold in January.
If the kids are bored, they can do parachute games with the sign.
If your preschooler’s head keeps bonking against the window as he falls asleep on the way home, fold it up and wedge it between his head and shoulder. (Remove the rope first, thanks.)
If your house is so small you have no place to store your signfrom year to year:
Keep it in the car as a lap blanket in the winter and to cover your steering wheel in the summer.
Hide it between your duvet cover and your quilt.
Fold it up and stuff it in a small pillowcase and use it as a pillow.
Hang it up in your living room to nip in the bud obnoxious political conversations.
You’re welcome!
Tip: Don’t argue with someone sporting one of these.
![On ne naît pas grosse par [DEYDIER, Gabrielle]](https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41oe2MzH-YL.jpg)
