Thanks to “RZ” for sending along this gem:

Survivors of the Knights Templar suing the Catholic Church?:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93613600
What’s next?

Hmmmm. Actually, that gives me an idea. I think my great-great-great-etc.-grandfather invented the wheel, so maybe I can claim a trademark and start charging royalties.

It also brings to mind a news report from July about a man suing Bible publishers because the Bible criticizes his gay lifestyle. Upon closer inspection, it appears to be a way to create publicity to help sell his self-published book.

We live in some crazy times, my friends.

I’m being “locked up for good” this coming Thursday, August 21. And I need your help to raise bail!

This is all part of the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s “Executive Lockup” fund raiser. My goal is to raise $2,400 for MDA to help local children and adults with one of the 43 neuromuscular diseases that the Muscular Dystrophy Association covers. Every amount helps. You can donate online at: https://www.joinmda.org/midtownlockup2008/lcox

I’ve raised about 25% of my goal so far. Donate if you are able. I’ll try to get photos of me in my “jail cell” Thursday and post them for you to see. Thanks in advance for your help!

I found last Thursday’s story on Florida Catholic to be quite inspiring: More Catholic doctors scrub contraceptive scripts. [Thanks to James H. at Opinionated Catholic for bringing it to my attention.]

The story focuses on Drs. Rebecca and Benjamin Peck in Ormond Beach, Florida, USA. In spite of being Catholic, they had prescribed contraceptives to patients in the past. However, they stopped doing so recently.

Last fall, the husband-and-wife team issued a letter to patients describing the side effects of using the pill, which include increased risk of breast and cervical cancer, heart disease, blood clots and death. The pill can also have an abortifacient effect because it does not keep sperm from meeting the egg. Though the principal way the pill prevents pregnancy is by preventing ovulation, it also thins a woman’s uterine lining, making it difficult to impossible for a fertilized egg to implant.

The reaction to the Peck’s decision has been positive:

About 90 percent of the Pecks’ 4,000 patients supported the doctors’ decision to stop prescribing contraception, the Pecks said. Heidi McCarthy, who has been a patient for more than two years, said she is honored to have Rebecca Peck as her doctor.

“In today’s politics of medicine, there are very, very few physicians who will stand up for what they believe in from an ethical standpoint; basically, they take the American Medical Association’s recommendations of everything,” McCarthy said. “(Rebecca Peck’s) decision was partly because of her religious beliefs but also because of her medical-ethical beliefs, and that is tantamount to the Hippocratic oath of first, do no harm.”

These doctors are taking their faith seriously and putting it into practice: something all of us need to do every day. Dr. Rebecca Peck said it well: “I think Catholics have to get back on the ball. God’s calling us all to live the truth. You’ve got to make a stand.”

Just when you thought the election season couldn’t get any more exciting, suddenly a new earth-shattering product is launched: Presidential Candidate Paper Dolls! Oh, I know what you’re thinking. How have we survived without these in the past? But more importantly, how will the stiff-necked rendition of John McCain and the casual-and-relaxed pose of Barack Obama impact the upcoming November election? Never have paper dolls been more important to the future of our nation.

[Special thanks to RZ at Savings Potpourri for this one!]

Rather than post some really long blog entries, I’ve created a separate section for Essays, which you can access from the top navigation bar. My first was just posted, entitled Catholic Evidence that Demands a Verdict. An excerpt:

What started in my teens as an interest in defending the Christian faith in general eventually led me to the conviction that the church Jesus founded was the Catholic Church, and to be fully Christian, one must be Catholic.

Today is a key holy day on the Catholic liturgical calendar: the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

This day is important to Catholics because it is the day we mark Mary’s “heavenly birthday” – in other words, the day that she was received into heaven. We see Mary’s entrance into heaven as a symbol of Christ’s promise to us: that whoever “endures to the end” (Matthew 10:22) will also be received into paradise.

Scripture supports the idea that Mary was assumed into heaven. In Revelation 12:1-2,5, Saint John describes her as appearing bodily in heaven:

And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. … she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne.

The physical depiction of Mary is different from others in heaven who appear to only be disembodied souls, such as those mentioned in Revelation 6:9-10.

The late Pope John Paul II in his August 15, 2004 homily, also cited John 14:3 in connection with the Assumption:

And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

Mary is not only Jesus’ mother, she is our mother as well, as we see in Revelation 12:17:

Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus.

Let’s make sure we take the time to remember our spiritual mother on this great feast day!

You’ve probably read the famous “Footprints” poem about seeing only one set of footprints in the sand during life’s more difficult times. Postcards, coffee mugs, and other items displaying the poem list the author as “unknown,” but apparently multiple people are claiming to be the author and fighting over the copyright ownership.

Remember that this coming Friday, August 15, is a Holy Day of Obligation in the United States: The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (we Catholics love our prepositional phrases). A post on Musings From A Catholic Bookstore tells “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Holy Days of Obligation.” An interesting read.

Before attending some Olympic events, President Bush began his Sunday in China attending a worship service at Beijing’s Kuanjie church, which is an officially recognized Protestant congregation. He remarked:

Laura and I just had the great joy and privilege of worshipping here in Beijing, China. You know, it just goes to show that God is universal and God is love. And no state, man or woman should fear the influence of loving religion.

(Watch the YouTube clip)

That last remark was apparently an allusion to the millions of Chinese who brave harassment and arrest to worship at unregistered “house” churches.

This raises an important question for us comfortable Americans: if you were threatened with serious social ostracism or government arrest for going to church, would you still go?

After reading that the University of Georgia (my alma mater) is receiving a $9.2 million grant to fund embryonic stem cell research, I wrote this post to the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s article:

True service to humanity begins with respect for human life. Since embryonic stem cells are obtained by destroying an embryonic human being in its early development, this type of research is gravely immoral. Shame on UGA and the NIH for their involvement in this deliberate killing of human life!

On June 13 of this year, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops approved a new statement on the topic of embryonic stem cell research (PDF 100K). Two weeks later, Richard Doerflinger wrote a great article, “Why the Embryo Matters,” which explains why it was important for the bishops to have issued this statement at this time:

Two things are new. First, the national policy debate is about to be renewed in a more intense way. Next year a new Congress and President will face this issue, and currently no presidential nominee supports President Bush’s position against funding stem cell research that requires destroying human embryos. This is a good time to remind Catholics and others what is at stake.

Second, this debate has reached a turning point in the scientific and medical community, though many politicians are slow to notice this. For years, the pro-life movement has said there are other and better ways to pursue the medical promise of stem cell research. It has become increasingly obvious that this is exactly right. Stem cells from adult tissues and umbilical cord blood have been used in clinical trials to repair heart damage, restore sight, and treat conditions like multiple sclerosis and juvenile diabetes. A new technique for “reprogramming” adult cells has produced cells with the properties of embryonic stem cells, without creating or destroying embryos – and prominent experts are abandoning embryo research in favor of this approach.

The article concedes that new technologies won’t simply make the embryonic-versus-adult-cell debate go away. But the hope is that talk of the supposed “unique promise” of embryonic research “may die down enough to allow the moral argument to be heard. If we have two promising ways to advance medicine, and one of them is free of moral problems, wouldn’t everyone prefer that route?”