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My High School directing career ended (probably) with a 2021 Chesterton Academy production of Little Women.
What a wonderful experience! What a wonderful group of young people!
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Pax et bonum
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
No, 64,000 Children Were Not Conceived in Rape
To call those figures an exaggeration would be an understatement. The article is frankly one of the worst and most misleading pieces of advocacy research that I have ever encountered in my years as social scientist. Furthermore, the fact that this article appeared in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal grants it legitimacy and credibility that it absolutely does not deserve. There are significant problems with the methodology that that authors used.
First, the authors of the study claim that approximately 12.5 percent of rapes result in a conception. That is an exceptionally high figure. The results of a survey of over 4,000 women that was published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1996 puts that figure at closer to 5 percent. Furthermore, the 5 percent figure cited in this 1996 journal article is probably high because several survey respondents reported being raped more than once.
Second, there are extremely wide disparities in reported rape statistics. The authors use data from the CDC’s 2016–17 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, which estimated that over 1.4 million women were the victims of a completed forcible rape during a twelve-month period. That is over four times higher than the estimates provided by the Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey and over ten times higher than FBI data on the number of rapes reported to law enforcement. Furthermore, the CDC data have been criticized for significantly overestimating the incidence of rape. Fair-minded researchers would have at least acknowledged these disparities. However, the authors of the JAMA Internal Medicine article simply assume that the much higher CDC estimates are the most accurate.
Finally, if one extrapolates the authors’ calculations to the entire country, there would have been about 178,000 children conceived in rape in 2017. If half of the rape victims decided to obtain abortions, that means that approximately 10 percent of all abortions were performed on rape victims. However, multiple Guttmacher surveys find that only 1 percent of women seeking abortions cite being a rape victim as a reason for obtaining an abortion. This clearly shows how exaggerated these estimates really are.
It should come as no surprise that some of the authors of this article are employed by organizations that support legal abortion. The lead author, Samuel Dickman, is the medical director of Planned Parenthood of Montana. Kari White is the executive and scientific director of Resound Research for Reproductive Health, previously known as the Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP). This group also supports legal abortion. The mainstream media outlets that ran stories about this study unsurprisingly failed to cover this blatant conflict of interest.
The fact that JAMA Internal Medicine published this article is troubling. In recent years many academic journals, particularly in the field of public health, have published opinion pieces or thinly researched articles by supporters of legal abortion. In 2017, the New England Journal of Medicine published an editorial criticizing some of President Trump’s Health and Human Services appointees. Prior to the vote on the Affordable Care Act, the New England Journal Medicine published a very superficial analysis of Massachusetts abortion data to claim that insurance coverage of abortion would not increase abortion rates.
Overall, academic journals should stick to publishing rigorous peer-reviewed research instead of serving mouthpieces for supporters of legal abortion.
- National Review
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/no-64000-children-have-not-been-conceived-in-rape-in-states-with-pro-life-laws/
Monday, January 29, 2024
What is hell like? Check out these visions received by Catholic saints
Thursday, January 25, 2024
Agatha Christie Goal Met, With Pleasure
One of my reading goals this year was to read at least two Agatha Christie mysteries. I've already met that goal with The A.B.C. Murders and The Murder at the Vicarage.
I actually decided to read them now after reading a couple of Dorothy Sayers Wimsey mysteries. I enjoyed them, but Sayers a slower read and I wanted something good, but quicker. Christie fit the bill.
I enjoyed both of the Christi books, with an edge to Hercule Poirot's A.B.C. I've read some of the Poirot mysteries before, and find him an interesting character.
Vicarage was my first Miss Marple. Unknowingly, I also selected the book that introduced her as a character. Maybe because she was just being introduced she was less developed than Poirot.
Both mysteries were typical of the Christies that I've read. She crafts a good tale, and handles dialogue particularly well. You can see why so many of her books have been translated into plays and movies.
In recent years I've now read
The A.B.C. Murders
The Murder at the Vicarage
Curtain
And Then There Were None
Murder on the Orient Express
Death on the Nile
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
I'll likely read more Christie in the future. But now, back to Wimsey? Or perhaps Dickens?
Pax et bonum
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
2024 ... Abortion is Healthcare
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Abortion is healthcare.
Pax et bonum
Attending an invalid wedding
“Remarriage of a divorced person without annulment.” Invalid. Potentially remediable through annulment and sanatio (from the Latin for “healing”), which cannot be presumed. For purposes of clarity, an annulment invalidates a marriage, while sanatio validates a marriage. Practicing Catholics should not attend. Possibly against natural law; certainly does not fulfill canon law.
Because of the strong words of Jesus cited above (see Mt 19:9), I don’t see how a practicing Catholic in good conscience can attend a wedding ceremony that he knows will be an invalid marriage. His/her attendance seems to condone what is going on. Rather, he should explain to the individauls that he loves them and prays for them and wants the very best for them, but that he will not be helping them at all if he ignores the clear teachings of Jesus Christ. These can be very hard conversations. But remember what Jesus said: “Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father” (Mt 10:32). That should be some consolation.
However, some wise and prudent priests with many years of pastoral experience are of the opinion that there could be some cases in which one’s (passive) presence may be legitimate, especially so as not to cut oneself off from one’s relative. For this to happen, the principle of double effect applies: (a) action is good or indifferent (just being there); (b) the intention is good (keeping lines of communication open); (c) the good effect intended is not a consequence of the evil effect; (d) there is a proportionately serious reason. In that case it might be advisable to attend the ceremony and miss the reception, and indicate as well that one does not approve the union.
Only time and the Second Coming will tell if you made the right choice.
-- Father Francis Hoffman
From Mt. St. Mary's University -
Should the family of someone marrying invalidly participate in the wedding?
I am writing on behalf of my husband and eldest daughter as well as myself. My second daughter, Irene, is about to attempt marriage with a should-be Catholic, Nick, who was married in the Church and then divorced. He thinks he can get an annulment, but he has not yet done anything about it. A college classmate of his who is now a minister will perform the ceremony at a Protestant church. Though Irene has no intention of leaving the Catholic Church, she agreed to this after our pastor told her that she could not marry Nick unless and until his first marriage is annulled.
Irene expects us to fulfill the social and financial responsibilities of the bride’s parents, as we would if she were marrying in the Church, and she also has asked her sister to be maid of honor. If Irene were marrying someone free to marry and marrying in the Church, we would have no problem with any of this, especially because Nick, apart from his marital situation, seems to us entirely acceptable. As it is, though, it does not seem right to act as if there were no problem. But if we do not go along with Irene’s plans, we are afraid she will never forgive us.
Should we cooperate? If not, should we even so much as attend the wedding? Whatever we do right now, we also are wondering how we should treat the couple afterwards. In the eyes of the Church, they will not be married. Still, we will want to have some sort of relationship with them.
Analysis:
This question concerns two things: material cooperation by family members with an invalid wedding and norms for relating to the couple afterwards. At all times, family members should maintain familial solidarity with their daughter and sister. But cooperating with the wedding, and even attending it, would have several bad moral effects. So, family members, in my opinion, should not cooperate with the wedding ceremony, attend it, or give the couple a wedding gift. Afterwards, family members should not treat the couple as married, but should treat the man as a close friend of their daughter and sister, and, without nagging, should encourage the couple to fulfill their responsibilities.
The reply could be along the following lines:
Despite Irene’s decision to enter a union that will not be a valid marriage, she is and always will remain your daughter and sister. You must continue to honor the reality and value of these relationships, and always treat her with familial affection and concern. No matter what else you do, avoid all harshness and do whatever is both morally permissible and otherwise possible to sustain good parental and sisterly relationships with her.
Nevertheless, in my judgment, you should not help organize, pay for, or participate in the wedding ceremony or any of the celebrations connected with it. I do not think you should give the couple a wedding gift, attend the ceremony, or do anything else that would be inappropriate if they were simply setting up housekeeping together without any pretense of marrying.126 Why? Because in this situation, as in all others, you should bear witness to the faith, which includes the truth about marriage’s indissolubility. To act as if an attempted remarriage after divorce were a real marriage is to belie the truth; to refuse to be involved is necessary to proclaim your faith about this matter, which, though not so basic as the truths that comprise the Creed, is as essential as any other truth of faith. Helping organize, paying for, or participating in the ceremony would imply that you approved, and your approval not only would encourage them but could give encouragement to other couples similarly situated to attempt marriage and so enter into ongoing nonmarital relationships. Even giving the couple a wedding gift or attending the ceremony would suggest that they really are marrying; moreover, you hardly could attend without seeming to approve unless you made your disapproval clear to everyone concerned, which very likely would be more alienating than simply staying away.
Someone might argue that you could cooperate in Irene’s wedding while at the same time making your disapproval clear to the couple. In support of that view, it might be pointed out that, if invited, you probably would attend the wedding celebration of a divorced non-Catholic who was a close friend and certainly would send a gift. In Irene’s case, however, you are certain that the attempted marriage will be invalid, while the significance of others’ attempts often is unclear. Even more important, toward your daughter and sister you have a responsibility you seldom have toward others: to try to dissuade her from going through with her plan. Your admonition will be undercut if you simultaneously agree to cooperate in carrying the plan out, and you cannot truthfully refuse cooperation while at the same time meaning to cooperate if she goes ahead despite your effort to dissuade her.
Moreover, attending a friend’s party and giving a gift manifests solidarity with the person as a friend without expressing a definite view about the occasion of the celebration. By contrast, a son’s or daughter’s wedding, though the beginning of a new family, is also in some way a completing of the parents’ work, so that normally they celebrate this fulfillment of their own marriage as well as the beginning of the young couple’s.
Then too, even in our society, parents and elder siblings generally have some influence upon a young person’s decision to marry. If therefore you conformed to social conventions about the family’s role in weddings, you would manifest approval and joy; whereas conforming to social conventions when one’s friends attempt marriage lacks that parental significance. One usually has nothing to do with their decision and is not celebrating one’s own fulfillment.
If you refuse to do what Irene wants, what should you do? In my judgment, your best approach probably will be to sit down with her and Nick, tell them you are not going to cooperate with or participate in the wedding, and explain exactly why, namely, because you consider yourselves bound in conscience not to act as if their legal relationship were going to be a genuine marriage. Tell them that you realize your course of action will cause them pain, as it does you, and express your regret about that. You should try to dissuade them from proceeding, but make no threats. Be prepared to remain calm and gentle even if they become angry and abusive. Make it clear you are not cutting them off, as if you expected never to see them again. But do not say how you plan to treat them if they go ahead, since that would presuppose they are going to proceed and so would undercut your effort to dissuade them.
Of course, they probably will proceed, and then you should consider communicating directly with Nick’s parents to explain to them why you will not fulfill the usual responsibilities of a bride’s parents. If you do communicate with them, tell them that you are not motivated by any antagonism toward Nick or them, and that you regret any pain or inconvenience your noncooperation with the wedding will cause them. Nick’s parents may distrust your motives and suggest that you are trying to evade your financial responsibilities. Such an accusation should not trouble you, but if it does, you might counter it by making a charitable donation in their name of money you would have spent on the wedding.
In the aftermath of the wedding, treat Irene with familial affection, keep in touch with her, and welcome her calls and visits. When the couple are together, you should treat them as you would if they were not married and the man were Irene’s close friend. Do not invite them to your home to stay overnight as if they were married. You may, however, invite them to family celebrations and may visit their residence. But you should discourage behavior in your presence that would be appropriate only if they were validly married. You may give gifts on occasions such as birthdays and Christmas that would be appropriate even if Irene were living by herself and the man were simply a family friend, but do not remember wedding anniversaries or give anything specifically suited to a married couple.
Irene and Nick still should pray and fulfill their other religious responsibilities, including going to Mass, but they should not receive Communion. When appropriate, encourage them to fulfill these responsibilities. If the couple have children, you should welcome them as your grandchildren and treat them accordingly. Encourage the parents to have their children baptized and to bring them up in the faith.127
All this is appropriate to maintain familial solidarity with Irene, to encourage the couple eventually to repent, and, meanwhile, to fulfill other responsibilities and avoid other sins. Therefore, I think you should explain to Irene, shortly after the wedding ceremony, how you plan to act toward her and Nick and your reasons for doing so. Over the long term, it will be hard not to treat the continuing situation as settled and entirely acceptable, especially if they get along reasonably well and have children, for there will be a real family bond between you and your grandchildren. But, without constantly nagging and scolding, you should resist the tendency to endorse the nonmarital relationship. While your rejection of it should be gentle, it should be sufficiently clear so that the couple never will be able to feel it has ceased to be a problem.
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