Going into Hibernation
Yes folks, that's right, Tremendous Trifles is going into hibernation during this week and the following one due to ridiculous amounts of work followed by spring break. I understand that for some of you this may come as a tough blow or even a life-shattering disappointment, but I'd like to remind you that there
are other good things in life besides this blog. I urge you not to vent your anger and disappointment through violent rioting or other extreme methods, as much as you might feel like doing so, since that would violate the spirit of this blog.
Also, in case you just can't seem to make it without your daily dose of TT, then perhaps this is a good time to search through the archives and take a look at all the other crap, I mean, masterpieces, that I've written.
Later!
A Lesson From a Late Night Chat
Tonight taught me an important lesson, or at least the beginnings of one. It is a lesson that I already knew, but didn't really understand, or that I understood, but just did not truly grasp. Indeed, I guess I still don't, not completely anyway. Whatever the case, for the first time I am really beginning to feel the reality that only works of love can truly change the world. Works of love are what glorify God and fulfill our mission in this world.
Before, I accepted this intellectually, but for the first time I am really grasping this as a fundamental reality. Paul really
did get it right when he told the Corinthians that "If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing."
So think, learn, seek the truth, study the Faith, defend it; but whatever you do, love as if your life depended on it, because ultimately, it does. That's the whole point of Christ on the cross. Self-giving, self-sacrifice, Love. Love saved us from death, and love takes us to the land of the living. To merely
know a certain truth is no reason to boast; that is, in a way, the least that is expected. Instead, we must let truth transcend knowledge and lead
into love, become love and guide love.
Love is the call that we
must answer.
Please pray for me, because I really am fearful of lacking the courage to follow.
A Question For My Readers
As some of you might know, I'm graduating from Penn this semester and have officially started the desperate search for a job with which the real world initiates university students at the end of their undergraduate careers. This being the case, I am facing a somewhat difficult dilemma and would like to request advice from that infinitely profound pool of wisdom that must certainly be my readership.
Basically, my problem is that while in the long-term I am interested in having a career serving others in accordance with my Catholic faith, perhaps in the field of human rights (especially the right to life), peace, or poverty reduction, I don't know whether I should try to work with an avowedly Catholic or pro-life organization as a recent college graduate. In other words, I fear that I will be branded in a particular way if I become involved with such organizations and that this will make it difficult for me to have a greater effect later in my career. For example, I have hopes that in a few years I might be able to attend a top graduate program, perhaps in International Relations, but I am worried that doing that sort of work may make it more difficult for me to get into certain schools. I am not unwilling to stand up for my beliefs, but it sometimes seems to me that it might be a good idea to wait a while before being vocal about them in my professional life. One reason, for example, is that people in general might be more willing to listen to someone with, say, a graduate degree from Yale, than someone who has been working in a pro-life organization all his life. Also, with an impressive and relatively "neutral" resume, I may have greater chances of finding high-level jobs at various sorts of organizations in order to help change them from within. I don't want to spend my whole life preaching to the choir.
So what do you think? What type of job should I get? Do you consider that making it obvious that I am Catholic and pro-life could ruin certain important prospects for the future? Let me know.
Good News from the UN!
Hey everyone! I thought some of you might be interested (and happy) to hear about a major new development in the UN regarding human cloning. Congratulations to everyone who worked in favor of passing Costa Rica's proposal for a total ban. I must add, however, that as a "Declaration" the document that was passed is not binding international law. The following a report from
C-Fam:
Friday Fax
February 18, 2005
Volume 8, Special Report
UN Adopts Pro-Life Declaration Against Human Cloning
In a monumental victory for the pro-life movement, the UN today adopted a declaration condemning human cloning. The UN called on Member States to adopt urgent legislation outlawing all cloning practices "as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life."
Costa Rica, which led the effort for a cloning ban, called the declaration a success for those who seek to promote ethical scientific research.
"This is a powerful message to the world that this morally questionable procedure is outside the bounds of acceptable experimentation," said Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, one of the main NGOs involved in the negotiation. "By adopting this declaration, the international community is united in condemning all human cloning as exploitative and unethical. This should encourage similar bans in legislatures around the world including in the US Senate," said Ruse.
The declaration, introduced today by Honduras, came on the last day of a week-long special session devoted entirely to resolving this issue. The declaration proved at the last minute to be an acceptable compromise to countries that have appeared staunchly divided all week. The declaration also marks the end of three years of UN deadlock over human cloning.
Countries were divided mainly over whether to protect human life or the human being. Costa Rica, Uganda, the United States and others who sought to ban all forms of human cloning, supported "human life." Countries including Belgium, Singapore and the United Kingdom, who wanted to ban only cloning that would result in born human beings, insisted on protecting the "human being," which according to some international legal documents would protect only those already born.
The declaration also calls on countries to "prevent the exploitation of women." Cloning requires harvesting eggs from women, and delegates from developing countries feared their women being turned into inexpensive "egg farms." The declaration calls on wealthier nations to direct attention and funding to pressing medical issues such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. It also condemns all applications of any genetic engineering techniques that threaten human dignity.
The declaration sets an international ethical standard that sends a clear signal to countries that encourage human cloning. For instance, in the United Kingdom, two "licenses" for research cloning have been issued. The first is currently subject to a legal challenge on the basis that the cloning "license" is unlawful and unnecessary. It is due to be heard in the High Court shortly. Cloning opponents in the United Kingdom welcomed the UN's resolution and look forward to Member States fulfilling their international obligations.
Copyright 2005 - C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute).
Thesis Time!
Hey people, so I decided to finally do what I had promised. Below, you will find the first two parts of what will be my senior IR Thesis at Penn. I encourage you to read what I have up to now and give me comments if you have any, although please keep in mind that this is a work in progress so things may still change... even the case studies I have picked. The thesis takes both a theoretical and empirical approach to understand the role of the Church in the field of conflict mediation, especially within the contexts of Guatemala and Colombia. I argue that in cases such as this, the Church is in a unique position that gives it possible advantages as a mediator. But don't take my word for it, go ahead and take a look at what I've done up to now.
Oh, and please don't steal my ideas. That's just a mean thing to do, as well as illegal.
Let the Hobbit Happen!
I am unsure whether it is a good idea to start pushing for a Hobbit film so soon, but as the Tolkien groupie that I am, I have no choice but to suggest that you head over to
thehobbitfilm.com and help them with their noble endeavor. Bilbo lives!
Pictures!
Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure. Since a lot of the people who visit Tremendous Trifles are family or friends, I thought it might be a good idea to post them. The pictures were taken with my friend Kent's camera. The first two are from our advance Valentine's Day dinner on Saturday, while the other one was randomly taken at the dining hall. If you are a creepy wacko seeking to steal my identity, be forewarned that your task is futile - I don't have a personality.
Advance Valentine's Day dinner organized by Kent and me for these two lovely ladies. Kent cooked the main course and the dessert was provided by Chili's... I mean... me.
Kent and Cait
I was NOT posing!
Beautiful. Read it.
Cry out full-throated and unsparingly, lift up your voice like a trumpet blast; Tell my people their wickedness, and the house of Jacob their sins.
They seek me day after day, and desire to know my ways, Like a nation that has done what is just and not abandoned the law of their God; They ask me to declare what is due them, pleased to gain access to God.
"Why do we fast, and you do not see it? afflict ourselves, and you take no note of it?" Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits, and drive all your laborers.
Yes, your fast ends in quarreling and fighting, striking with wicked claw. Would that today you might fast so as to make your voice heard on high!
Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance: That a man bow his head like a reed, and lie in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?
This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke;
Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed; Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!-Isaiah 58: 1-9
Lazarus
By: José Asunción Silva
Translated by: Ertandberni
Come, Lazarus! comanded
The Savior, and within the black sepulcher
The body meekly rose under its shroud,
Attempted walking, with a few fearful steps,
Then Smelled, then touched, then looked, then gave a cry
And wept for joy.
Four moons thereafter, amidst the wretched shadows
Of the darkening twilight in the silence
Of the place and the hour, amidst the frigid tombs
Of ancient a cemetery
Was Lazarus, there in solitude weeping
And in envy of the dead.
LázaroPor: José Asunción Silva
Ven, Lázaro! gritóle
El Salvador, y del sepulcro negro
El cadáver alzóse entre el sudario,
Ensayó caminar, a pasos tremulos,
Olió, palpó, miró, sintió, dio un grito
Y lloró de contento.
Cuatro lunas más tarde, entre las sombras
Del crepúsculo oscuro en el silencio
Del lugar y la hora, entre las tumbas
De antiguo cementerio
Lázaro estaba, sollozando a solas
Y envidiando a los muertos.
I'm unsure whether a couple of the lines on my translation work well. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or any opinions whatsoever!
Guess what...
I saw George Weigel speak today about the future of the Church. It was pretty awesome. There are certainly a lot of challenges but also a lot of hope for the future. He considers that the three "hot" issues in future years around which there will be much debate within the Church will be how to engage an apostate Europe, radical militant Islam, and the biotech revolution. There is much work to be done.
Also, I asked him for some pointers for my senior international relations thesis and he gave me his contact info. Now you can all be jealous.
Besides that, I'd like to point out what a huge nerd he is. There is simply no question about it. But of course, it's nerds that rule the world.
Love and Superstition
Is God a superstition? Perhaps. But if so, then love is a superstition. The following are a couple of very good observations by Jonah Goldberg in an old NRO column:
[A]ll morality is based upon transcendence — or it is merely based on utilitarianism of one kind or another, and therefore it is not morality so much as, at best, an enlightened expediency or will-to-power. It is no more rational to vote based on a desire to do "good" than it is to vote based on a desire to do God's will. Indeed, for millions of people this is a distinction without a difference — as it was for so many of the abolitionists progressives and civil-rights leaders today's liberals love to invoke but never actually learn about.
Love, in fact, is just as silly and superstitious a concept as God (and for those who believe God is Love, this too is a distinction without a difference). Chesterton's observation that the purely rational man will not marry is just as correct today, because science has done far more damage to the ideal of love than it has done to the notion of an awesome God beyond our ken. Genes, hormones, instincts, evolution: These are the cause for the effect of love in the purely rational man's textbook. But Maher would get few applause lines from his audience of sophisticated yokels if he mocked love as a silly superstition. This is, in part, because the crowd he plays to likes the idea of love while it dislikes the idea of God; and in part because these people feel love, so they think it exists. But such is the extent of their solipsism and narcissism that they not only reject the existence of God but go so far as to mock those who do not, simply because they don't feel Him themselves. And, alas, in elite America, feelings are the only recognized foundation of metaphysics.
Some Facts to Ponder
The following is a report regarding a new study revealing how women are disproportionally hurt by the destructive sexual behavior that is prevalent in our culture. Please go ahead and consider its findings:
Culture & Cosmos
February 8, 2005 Volume 2, Number 27
Study Shows America's Sexual Behavior To Be Highly Lethal
The high toll of the sexual revolution on the lives of Americans was made apparent in a recently published study showing 1.3 percent of all American deaths to be caused by sexual behavior. The study, from the current edition of the medical journal Sexually Transmitted Infections, examined data from 1998 to determine the overall health burden caused by sexual activity in the US and found that women "bear a disproportionately high proportion" of the cost that comes with sexual liberation.
The study, authored by three researchers from the Centers for Disease Control, examined "adverse health outcomes" that result from sexual activity including both sexually transmitted diseases, viruses and infections, infertility and abortions. More men then women died in 1998 as a result of sexual behavior - 19,634 men compared to 10,148 women. But almost all of the deaths in men were caused by HIV. "If HIV related mortality were excluded, more than 80% of sexual behaviour related mortality would be among . . . women." The study found that 5,914 women died of non-HIV related sexual behavior; for men the number was number 1,413.
While HIV killed 4,234 women, it was cervical cancer that was leading cause of death for women claiming 4,921 lives. Cervical cancer is caused primarily by the human papillomavirus (HPV), the most common sexually transmitted disease. That it causes more deaths than HIV is notable due to the politically charged nature of HPV. Because condoms do not protect against HPV, a fact acknowledged by the American Cancer Society, pro-family organizations have pointed to it as proof that sexual health can be insured only by abstinence until a monogamous marriage. Planned Parenthood Federation of America has in the past accused such organizations of engaging in "an alarmist and misleading public policy and media campaign."
Beyond death the report also examines the overall health effects of sexual behavior. It found that in the course of one year, 7.5 percent of Americans suffered from almost 20 million incidences of negative health effects brought on by sexual behavior. Of such cases women suffered a disproportionate 62 percent including 2.5 million cases of gonorrhea and 2.6 million cases of trichomoniasis.
The study also calculated the Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY) cost for illnesses brought on by sexual behavior. DALY is a number that combines into a single measurement the loss of healthy years of life that result from an illness with the years of life cut short by premature death due to an illness. Sexual behavior cost women 1,224,953 disability adjusted life years while men came in under one million.
The report did not buffet the bad news with hopeful predictions and called this a problem not likely to go away soon. "[G]iven the size and chronicity of HIV, HPV, and other hepatitis virus epidemics, the overall health burden related to sexual behaviour is unlikely to decline rapidly in coming years."
Culture of Life Foundation
1413 K Street, NW, Suite 1000
Washington DC 20005
Phone: (202) 289-2500 Fax: (202) 289-2502
E-mail: clf@culture-of-life.org
Website: http://www.culture-of-life.org
Straight from the Competition!
Looking through the posts of
Being! Or Nothingness, one of my fellow nominees for
Best New Blog (vote for me!), I found some really insightful thoughts regarding the culture of life, euthanasia, and the controversy over
Million Dollar Baby. Here it goes:
Sure [the movie is] an apologia for euthanasia . . . but it doesn't have to be. Christians today (not to mention conservatives) seem to be in the business of elimating everything in the culture that they think doesn't support their ideology. This is exactly the problem. Christians today treat Christianity as an ideology, something that others must be "convinced" of, even if that means eliminating everything that would not support it. They treat Christianity as a moralism and not as a man, a man who has come to us and said "Follow me" and offer us life, a life that not even death can destroy.
A life that death can't destroy . . . nor the culture of death for that matter. When will christians realize that the culture of death is not something to be feared, but something to be combatted with Life? This film, in my opinion, should be used by Christians to fight Euthanasia. Ebert tells us:
"I believe the character Maggie is such a fighter that she could learn to deal with her disability and enjoy her life. But here is the important point: She doesn't believe that. Yes, it is true, as critics have charged, that she receives inadequate counseling. That the care in her hospital is not good, and the security is laughable. But the screenplay by Paul Haggis and Eastwood's direction make that clear -- they know it, too. It is not movie criticism to say Maggie needed better counseling. We might as well say Hamlet needed a psychiatrist."
If this is true, then we should take up where this line of argument leaves off. People are not choosing Euthanasia because they really want to die, they are using it because they think their lives aren't valuable, worthwhile, important. They are choosing Euthanasia because the counseling they receive is inadequate, often motivated by financial concerns. They are choosing Euthanasia because of poor care and neglect. They are choosing Euthanasia because of our failure to love.
In the end, this movie seems to help make our case. Euthanasia is the response of a people that have given up hope. A people that see no positivity to life. A people who are as dead on the inside as they seek to make those they "care" for.
But Christianity is a living hope. Christianity is the announcement of a Presence that offers us a postivity toward life. Christianity is a people who are alive, with life-life, and seek to fill those around them with the same hope, postitivity, and life.
We have nothing to fear from this movie. We have only to fear the timidity of our hearts.
EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW - Irony provided at taxpayers' expense
Penn for Life at the March! Riff, Shannon, & Frank
I'm Famous!
Ok, maybe not. But I was still lucky enough to somehow get nominated for the
Catholic Blog Awards under the category of
Best New Blog. This is so exciting. If you like the blog, please go and
vote! You can find the Best New Blog category at the bottom of the page.
Fellow Nominees:
Happy Catholic
Diary of a Suburban Priest
Moniales
Being! Or Nothingness
What is Compassion?
Wow. My friend Frank just made what I regard as a really piercing observation in a post on
his site. Here it goes:
Real compassion means suffering with somebody, because you care about them so much that you're willing to give your energy, your time, and your whole self to them. It doesn't mean giving a homeless man some cash; it means getting down and dirty into the nitty-gritty details of his suffering, working with him to make his concerns your concerns.
Too many people want to end suffering because it causes them to become uncomfortable. Not because they do have compassion but because they don't: the possibility of suffering simply disgusts elitist people. 'How could anyone live like that?' they wonder. The disabled, the unwanted, the unloved -- these do not fit into their Grand Utopian Visions, where everybody is Equal (that is, the Same). So if We cannot help you (i.e., make you the Same as the Rest of Us) with a Government Program, you can be erased. Hence abortion and euthanasia. And they call themselves `Progressives'.
Welcome to the Brave New World.
Intense.
What to Drink?
Feast on wine or fast on water
And your honour shall stand sure,
God Almighty's son and daughter
He the valiant, she the pure;
If an angel out of heaven
Brings you other things to drink,
Thank him for his kind attentions,
Go and pour them down the sink.
From G.K. Chesterton's "The Song of Right and Wrong."
Murder
Make no mistake about it, to starve Terri Shiavo is to murder her. It horrifies me and enrages me to see the way this sad case has been twisted around to suggest that killing her would be an act of compassion. People say that they should just "let her die." Its something that one hears all the time. This is the product of a false, stupid, and simply evil myth. TERRI IS NOT DYING. Please get this through your head. She is
not on life support. She simply cannot feed herself (neither can a baby, by the way) because she is
disabled, so she is being fed. She is NOT in a coma, and she is not in a vegetative state. If they stop feeding her, she will die a horrendous death: by starvation (you know, like the people from Africa you see on pictures?).
When I was growing up, my friend's sister was severely mentally handicapped. Her name was Monica and she was loved and cared for by her family. Her situation was
very dire, and cognitively speaking, I seriously doubt she was better off than Terri. However, to anyone who ever met Monica, it would have been painfully obvious that if her family had suddenly decided to stop feeding her, it would have been nothing less than murder.
Of course, Terri's family cares for her and would never do such a thing. It is her "husband," who now has another woman, who longs to make things easy for himself by getting rid of her. This is a warped reason for killing somebody, if I ever heard one.
But why don't you check Terri out yourself? You can go see some videos of her on the
Terri's Fight website to see just how "vegetative" she is.
Do it.
Myths about Terri's case:
MYTH: Terri has been in a persistent vegetative state, a coma, or is terminally ill, for 13 years.
FACT: NO. Terri is disabled and has brain damage, but is not in PVS, coma, or terminally ill.
MYTH: Removal of food and hydration is "death with dignity" and painless.
FACT: NO. Removal of food and hydration is "death with gross indignity" and monstrously painful and ugly even with morphine or other drugs.
MYTH: Food and hydration are "extraordinary means", and thus a patient has the right to refuse.
FACT: NO. Even, and especially, in secular terms, while the use of ventilators, drastic surgery, experimental "therapies", etc., are extraordinary means and may be refused, food and hydration have always been defined in medicine as ordinary means, or "palliative care" (as is the use of antibiotics, needed X-rays, minor surgery, etc.). For Catholics, it is morally permissible to refuse extraordinary means, but not morally permissible to refuse ordinary means, or palliative care (including food and hydration).
Please,
please stand against this horrible injustice! Call your representatives at the Florida State Legislative branch. Or, at the very least, pray for her.
Any person with the least bit of concern for the dignity of human life should stand firmly against this. Do you realize what you are saying about the value of the life of physically or mentally handicapped people? Can't you understand that you are saying to a whole class of people that their life is worthless? And they don't like it. Just go to the
Not Dead Yet website and see for yourself. How dare you tell somebody that it would be better for them to be dead?!
