Ubi Petrus

…and for the sake of your monitor and keyboard, put down your drink before you click here. Don’t blame me for any C|N>K action if you don’t. (That’s geek speak for “coffee through nose onto keyboard” if you didn’t already know.) Chris Johnson has outdone himself this time.

H/T to Mark Shea.

Fr. Erik Richtsteig in obliquely discussing the situation with Fr. Francis Mary Stone of EWTN made a point that I think deserves far more attention aside any discussion of that situation:

When I hear a priest opine that marriage is the solution to problems, it always occurs to me that he is not hearing enough confessions.

The point being that a priest is a priest is a priest. The quote from Psalm 110, “The Lord has sworn an oath and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek‘” comes to mind. The solution to trials in the priesthood is resolution to become a better priest, not to leave. (Remember, I’m talking in generic terms here and am not making any judgment on Fr. Stone.) There are remedies to problems in our lives and we find them in the context of our lives, not by wishing we were something we are not.

Fr. Francis Mary Stone, of course, remains in my prayers as does the woman in this situation. This is an incredible trial and difficulty for the many people involved and we only pray it is resolved as the Lord desires. Oremus!

The BBC has the full story and AmP has some commentary:

Gabriel Jones was not growing in his mother’s womb so parents Rebecca and Mark of Staffordshire decided to take the medical staff’s advice.

But, despite a number of operations designed to end his life, Gabriel instead began to grow.

He and brother Ieuan were successfully delivered by caesarean section.

Rebecca Jones, 35, of Lightwood, said that thinking Gabriel was going to die was the most horrendous experience she and her family had been through.

“It was a bit of a nightmare to say the least,” she said.

The problems were first noticed when Rebecca went for her 20-week scan. Gabriel was found to be half the size of his brother.

“He wasn’t growing and he wasn’t putting on weight like babies should,” she said.

“At 22 weeks I went to North Staffordshire’s maternity unit with pre-eclampsia. At that point I thought we were going to lose both of them.”

‘Dangerous size’

Two weeks later she attended Birmingham Women’s Hospital where the news was getting worse.

“Gabriel had slowed right down. He was not moving or growing and his heart had swelled to a dangerous size.

“At the end of the day I wanted both of them.

“I was carrying both of them and I wanted both of them desperately.

“But it was looking like it was not going to be.”

The family realised they had to make a decision. Medical staff had explained that if things continued as they were Ieuan could also suffer.

“We had to make the decision. It was not a matter of if he died, he was going to die.

“It was a case that when he died there was a high risk that we would have lost Ieuan as well.”

Opposite effect

So, at 25 weeks, on 13 February, staff at Birmingham Women’s Hospital took the decision to sever Gabriel’s umbilical cord to cut off his blood supply.

However, that was unsuccessful so later the twins’ placenta was cut in half.

“No-one expected him to live through but it had the total opposite effect and he started to grow.”

The twins were born by emergency caesarean at 31 weeks and now need no treatment at all.

The family have since raised more than £4,000 for the two maternity units.

I think AmP’s final statement is the most important: “The presumption is life, not death.” Contemplate that for a while as we consider the unquestioning power so often given doctors over every aspect of our lives.

At Here There Are Lions Argent has a tremendously moving story. It is a strong reminder that we do not have the luxury of shortcuts when dealing with others’ souls. If you’re a catechist, it’s also one doozy of a battery recharge.

She hobbled through the door last spring a half hour into class time. She made such an entrance that I knew here was Christ disguised. She was a fallen-away Catholic having spent decades dabbling, first with the Pentecostals, and then with the Mormons. She was trouble spelled out with capital letters.

Tags: Catholic, RCIA

This morning as we’re coasting into the drop-off line at school my son pipes in from the back seat,

“Daddy, I wish we could go to Mass this morning.”

Yup. My son just begged to go to Mass. Brings a tear to me eye it does. And he hasn’t even received First Communion yet. So up extra early tomorrow we will be, to make it out in time for the pre-school Mass. There are some days I think my kids are growing up to be better Catholics than I am now. Then I realize – that’s not exactly a bad thing.

If nothing else, Philip Pullman has succeeded in getting quite a bit of attention for “His Dark Materials” and its associated movie release. In Hollywood they say that any publicity is good publicity, as long as they spell your name right. That said, I wouldn’t want to get on Carl Olson’s bad side:

On one hand, I don’t expect Pullman to be the second coming of Aristotle or even Hume, but since he has made so many public statements about his atheistic beliefs and understanding of religion, specifically Christianity, it seemed reasonable to take a look at what he has to say. Put simply, what he does say is underwhelming. It is notable for a glaring absence of anything remotely resembling serious study and thought, consisting mostly of clichés (“I’m for open-mindedness and tolerance”), vague silliness (“I think the world today is in some danger of becoming medieval again”), and angry insults (“For Tolkien, the Catholic, the Church had the answers, the Church was the source of all truth, so ‘Lord of the Rings’ does not touch those big deep questions”). He abuses the words “fundamentalism” and “theocracy.” In short, he is like a poor man’s Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens—a smart and clever man who writes well, but also writes far too much about something he knows far too little about. It would be like me pontificating about how to be a great opera singer or why global warming is a fraud/fact/fantasy.

Ouch. “[A] poor man’s Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens” … that’s positively scorching, in a reducing-to-ashes kind of way. Like I said, ouch.

Confessions of a Recovering Choir Director has restarted his blog, but it’s moving. Always good to see one come back to the blogosphere.

Via AMDG, you can help out the pro-life cause simply by voting in an online CNN poll. From the story:

Scott Southworth, the district attorney of Juneau County and a longtime
supporter of Pro-Life Wisconsin, has been nominated for an award by CNN. The voting is done online and ends Monday, November 5, 2007 at 12 p.m. ET. Vote now and show your support for a fellow pro-lifer! All votes are anonymous and do not require registration.

According to the CNN description of Southworth, “In 2003, while in Iraq, Maj. Scott Southworth volunteered at the Mother Teresa Orphanage in Baghdad. There, he befriended Ala’a, a 9-year-old boy with cerebral palsy. Two years later, Southworth arranged to bring Ala’a to the United States. In June, he was granted legal adoption and the two officially became father and son.”

It looks like all of the people listed there are worthy of great attention.

Jeffrey Tucker at NLM has posted an excerpt of a brochure from Reidel and Associates, a firm that provides consulting services for worship spaces. They pretty well precisely echo my sentiments on carpeting in church. Of course, they also have a little more evidence for their stance than do I but it is good to see that uncomfortable feeling I’ve always had about carpet has a basis in fact. In part they say:

The floor is typically the building surface that is largest and nearest to worshipers and musicians. It is important that the floor be reflective of sound, particularly near musicians, since it provides the first opportunity for much sound energy to be reinforced. Carpet is an inappropriate floor covering in the worship space; it is acoustically counterproductive to the needs of the worshipers. The mood of warmth and elegance that carpeting sometimes provides can also be provided with acoustically reflective flooring such as quarry tile or wood that is of warm color and high quality. The notion that the worshiper covers the floor surface, making its material composition acoustically unimportant is false. The large floor area of the worship space has great acoustical influence. Appropriate floor materials include slate, quarry tile, sealed wood, brick, stone, ceramic tile, terrazzo, and marble.

and

Some may consider using absorbing materials such as carpeting or acoustical tile to suppress noise from the congregation. Noise from shuffled feet or small children is usually not as pervasive as might be feared. It is unwise to destroy the proper reverberant acoustical setting for worship in deference to highly infrequent noisy behavior.

In other words: first, don’t fear the children; second, let the congregation hear the music. It’s amazing how much some parishes will invest in organs or in training for their choirs only to ruin the music by forcing them to sing on carpet.