The Pope of the Family

St. John Paul II is called the Pope of the Family.  Truly his writings on the family have been a very important source for my own prayer life, but also a resource for talks I have had to give about the family.  Part of his vast writings on the family are also his works centering on women and motherhood, perhaps also brought about by his deep Marian devotion.  I like more especially his apostolic letter Mulieris dignitatem (shout out to all Mothers!):

apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem

“Motherhood involves a special communion with the mystery of life, as it develops in the mother’s womb. The mother is filled with wonder at this mystery of life, and ‘understands’ with unique intuition what is happening inside her. In the light of the ‘beginning’, the mother accepts and loves as a person the child she is carrying in her womb. This unique contact with the new human being developing within her gives rise to an attitude towards human beings – not only towards her own child, but every human being – which profoundly marks the woman’s personality.” - See more at: http://www.briannaheldt.com/#sthash.aksmTSNN.dpuf

“Motherhood involves a special communion with the mystery of life, as it develops in the mother’s womb. The mother is filled with wonder at this mystery of life, and ‘understands’ with unique intuition what is happening inside her. In the light of the ‘beginning’, the mother accepts and loves as a person the child she is carrying in her womb. This unique contact with the new human being developing within her gives rise to an attitude towards human beings – not only towards her own child, but every human being – which profoundly marks the woman’s personality.” - See more at: http://www.briannaheldt.com/#sthash.aksmTSNN.dpu

“Motherhood involves a special communion with the mystery of life, as it develops in the mother’s womb. The mother is filled with wonder at this mystery of life, and ‘understands’ with unique intuition what is happening inside her. In the light of the ‘beginning’, the mother accepts and loves as a person the child she is carrying in her womb. This unique contact with the new human being developing within her gives rise to an attitude towards human beings – not only towards her own child, but every human being – which profoundly marks the woman’s personality.”

On another note, this black-and-white photo of Our Lady and the Child Jesus served as the model for the Mary Mater Ecclesiae mosaic overlooking St. Peter's Square.  Read the inside story, and how it relates to Bishop Alvaro del Portillo, who will be beatified on September 27, 2014 in Madrid.

“Motherhood involves a special communion with the mystery of life, as it develops in the mother’s womb. The mother is filled with wonder at this mystery of life, and ‘understands’ with unique intuition what is happening inside her. In the light of the ‘beginning’, the mother accepts and loves as a person the child she is carrying in her womb. This unique contact with the new human being developing within her gives rise to an attitude towards human beings – not only towards her own child, but every human being – which profoundly marks the woman’s personality.” - See more at: http://www.briannaheldt.com/#sthash.aksmTSNN.dpuf

“Motherhood involves a special communion with the mystery of life, as it develops in the mother’s womb. The mother is filled with wonder at this mystery of life, and ‘understands’ with unique intuition what is happening inside her. In the light of the ‘beginning’, the mother accepts and loves as a person the child she is carrying in her womb. This unique contact with the new human being developing within her gives rise to an attitude towards human beings – not only towards her own child, but every human being – which profoundly marks the woman’s personality.” - See more at: http://www.briannaheldt.com/#sthash.aksmTSNN.dpuf

“Motherhood involves a special communion with the mystery of life, as it develops in the mother’s womb. The mother is filled with wonder at this mystery of life, and ‘understands’ with unique intuition what is happening inside her. In the light of the ‘beginning’, the mother accepts and loves as a person the child she is carrying in her womb. This unique contact with the new human being developing within her gives rise to an attitude towards human beings – not only towards her own child, but every human being – which profoundly marks the woman’s personality.” - See more at: http://www.briannaheldt.com/#sthash.aksmTSNN.dpuf

Brief encounter with John Paul the Great

Pope John Paul II, Sala Nervi, Vatican, 1990

First picture shows me holding on to the Holy Father's hand for a few seconds.

Rhett+ 11th

Today is Rhett's 11th death anniversary.  Pray for us!

Soda ban

Additional moves toward the nanny state.  I know that high-sugar drinks are "dangerous".  Believe me, I know.  But I am for positive reinforcement, more than outright ban, for issues that fall more into freedom of consciences.   Then again, there could be an issue as regards hypocrisy, banning soda but not putting more teeth to laws and rules that matter more.

permesso, grazie, e scusi

Permesso, Grazie, e Scusi.  All you'll ever need, many times.

Sound familiar?

1. General lowering of moral standards
2. A rise in infidelity, and illegitimacy
3. The reduction of women to objects used to satisfy men. 
4. Government coercion in reproductive matters. 

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/time-to-admit-it-the-church-has-always-been-right-on-birth-control-2012-2#ixzz2sOvO14Zv

Breaking ... the Pope is Catholic

And again, the Pope proves, by his words, that he is Catholic:

"For example, it is frightful even to think that there are children, victims of abortion, who will never see the light of day."

 You cannot be clearer than this.  Read.

And then you have this

Nelson Mandela was a historic figure, no less.  But even in his "greatness", there are some acts in his life that diminish his stature in my eyes, even as I mentioned somewhere else that he was released from prison the day I turned 22 (which of course is trivial and does not add to anything, heh).

I will not link to anything since these are readily available in the web:  he had many women in his life, did not renounce violence (contributory to many deaths and a little too friendly with dictators), and signed South Africa's abortion law that is one of the worst this world has seen (without restrictions that even allowed non-doctors to perform), among others.

Damn, global warming and climate change

Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) was man-made.  No, not due to HAARP.  Man-made global warming and climate change, that is. 

Damn, this global warming / climate change has been with us for so long, and we have not learned.  (Show me some tears now).

Yes, friends, these typhoons caused by man have been with us, by this account, as early as 1897.

Bad for global warming fear mongers

Two recent write-ups in anticipation of the next UN IPCC report speak of the greater cause of skepticism in anthropogenic global warming.  There are many more out there.  The IPCC report comes out September 27.  Save the date.

Where's the beef?

Where's the warming at?

More

We continue to call them out

They may try to hide the truth by spinning it according to their hard-core beliefs, but we are not to be fooled.  Yet again, the warming that they say and that their models say is happening (in catastrophic levels, mind you) is simply way off.

But the report “fails to mention [2012] was one of the coolest of the decade, and thus confirms the cooling trend,” according to an analysis by climate blogger Pierre Gosselin.

“To no one’s surprise, the report gives the reader the impression that warming is galloping ahead out of control,” writes Gosselin. “But their data shows just the opposite.”

Although the NOAA report noted that in 2012, “the Arctic continues to warm” with “sea ice reaching record lows,” it also stated that the Antarctica sea ice “reached a record high of 7.51 million square miles” on Sept. 26, 2012.

And the latest figures for this year show that there’s been a slowdown of melting in the Arctic this summer as well, with temperatures at the North Pole well below normal for this time of year. Meteorologist Joe Bastardi calls it “the coldest ever recorded.”

 What Global Warming?

Control or a waste of money

It is not surprising, of course, that if one has lots of money that isn't really his (taxpayers') but has to spend it, "creativity" takes the better of him.  CIA spending money to try to control climate, in "aid" of finding how climate can affect national security?  That's like spending money on how to delay sunrise because doing so might actually be good for national security.  Then again, we've heard stories about NASA trying to prove the big bang theory.

According to US website 'Mother Jones' the CIA is helping fund a study by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) that will investigate whether humans could use geoengineering - which is defined as deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth's climatic system - to stop climate change.

Or from another news outlet ...

A 2008 study by the National Intelligence Council concluded that climate change posted a serious threat to national security.

“Climate change and climate-change policies could affect … domestic stability in a number of key states, the opening of new sea lanes and access to raw materials, and the global economy more broadly -- with significant geopolitical consequences,” it said.

Lumen Fidei

Pope Francis's first encyclical will be out on Friday:  Lumen Fidei.  Some days ago, it was mentioned that this will be a "lavoro da quattro mani", a work done by four hands:  started by Pope Benedict XVI, and finished by Pope Francis.

Vatican City, 1 July 2013 (VIS) - Pope Francis' first encyclical, entitled “Lumen Fidei”, will be published on Friday 5 July. The document, described as “not very extensive” by the director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi S.J., will be presented at a Press Conference by Cardinal Marc Ouellet, P.S.S., prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization.

When the real world trumps their "plans"

Also read.

Profit's not a bad word for non-profits

Planning for, and gaining profit, to take care of non-profit's overhead is not a bad thing.  Here's Kjerstin Erickson.

Overhead, it turns out, could have made all the difference. With the appropriate investments in efficiency-building infrastructure, administration, and development, FORGE would undoubtedly be alive today. Rather than starving a painful death, we’d be growing and thriving – a force for good in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who have lost everything.

If you’d asked me ten years ago to name the dirtiest word in the nonprofit language, I would have undoubtedly told you: OVERHEAD. If you asked me today, I’d give you the same answer. In the intervening decade, however, the tables have turned. Overhead is not dirty because it represents inefficiency, waste, and greed; it is dirty because of the powerful myth it has promulgated. That myth – the one that equates “low” overhead with high performance and “high” overhead with greed and irresponsibility – leads to a very dangerous and unsustainable outcome. I bought into it, or at least didn’t push back on it hard enough. It pains me every day to think of what I lost, and how I could have done it differently.

Happy Independence Day Philippines!

Happy Independence Day Philippines!

Trouble in paradise

For the "great" New York Times to say this, is telling. Power corrupts truly, and if one is already corrupt, then one can only get worse.

The administration has now lost all credibility. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers ...

Essentially, the administration is saying that without any individual suspicion of wrongdoing, the government is allowed to know whom Americans are calling every time they make a phone call, for how long they talk and from where.

This sort of tracking can reveal a lot of personal and intimate information about an individual. To casually permit this surveillance — with the American public having no idea that the executive branch is now exercising this power — fundamentally shifts power between the individual and the state, and it repudiates constitutional principles governing search, seizure and privacy. ...

That’s no longer good enough. Mr. Obama clearly had no intention of revealing this eavesdropping, just as he would not have acknowledged the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, had it not been reported in the press. Even then, it took him more than a year and a half to acknowledge the killing, and he is still keeping secret the protocol by which he makes such decisions. ...

That’s no longer good enough. Mr. Obama clearly had no intention of revealing this eavesdropping, just as he would not have acknowledged the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, had it not been reported in the press. Even then, it took him more than a year and a half to acknowledge the killing, and he is still keeping secret the protocol by which he makes such decisions. 

Manila, my Manila

Remember when Dan Brown wrote "The Da Vinci Code" and many dismissed the "falsehoods" as fruit of his imagination (or lack of it)?  Now he writes "Inferno" with "falsehoods".  He is a writer not a journalist.  Let him be.  Marie sees it as it should be.

Of uterus transplants

Rebecca Taylor writes about uterus transplant.  She posts three questions that can very well be used in consideration of the use of technology in health and artificial reproductive techniques:

Does this technology disrespect or unnecessarily endanger human life at any point from the very beginning to natural death? Does it reduce human life to a biological commodity? Does it require that a human organism be used or destroyed?