Sin Sucks

I just came across this article where a 9 year old who was pregnant with twins had an abortion. She was supposedly raped by her step-father. I've reproduced the article at the bottom.

I don't really know what to say about this other than sin really sucks. How do you even begin to approach a situation like this? Sure, you never want to take a life by abortion because through meditation on the scripture (with the help of the Church), we know that every child is a gift from God even if conceived by rape, invitro-fertilization, etc. At the same time, a 9 year old body is likely to have a hard time gestating twins and her life is just as precious. Furthermore, this decision is actually a product of consequence from the (allegedly) sinful actions of the girl's step-father. And so it goes.

To me, this problem goes away if the step-father was able to receive full healing for his lust which is why I continue to seek out Christ's healing power and transformation. However, we live in a broken world and so we find ourselves with these pro-life/pro-choice debate fringe cases.

Brazil: 9-Year-Old Has Abortion Despite Church's Objections

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 5, 2009

ABORTION A 9-year-old girl who was carrying twins, and whose stepfather is suspected of raping her, underwent an abortion on Wednesday despite complaints from Brazil’s Roman Catholic Church. The stepfather has been jailed since last week, the police said. Abortion is illegal in Brazil, the country with the most Roman Catholics, but judges can make exceptions if the mother’s life is in danger or the fetus has no chance of survival. Fatima Maia, director of the public university hospital where the abortion was performed, said the pregnancy, which was in its 15th week, posed a serious risk to the girl, who weighs 80 pounds. But Marcio Miranda, a lawyer for the Archdiocese of Olinda and Recife in northeastern Brazil, said the girl should have carried the twins to term and had a Caesarean section. “It’s the law of God: Do not kill,” he said in comments reported by the newspaper O Globo.

We can never partner with evil to do good. So what do we do here?

Indulgences

The number one most e-mailed article right now on the New York Times is called "For Catholics, a Door to Absolution Is Reopened" (you might need to register to read the whole thing, but don't worry, it's free).

There are lots of things to be said about indulgences and the article itself. Here is one take on it from Fr. Z. The text includes the original article along with Fr. Z's emphasis and commentary.

What are your thoughts/experiences on indulgences?

Who You Are When No One's Looking

I've never been one to really follow golf, but this yahoo blog post caught my eye.

JP Hayes is a professional golfer who basically disqualified himself from a year of exempt status for the entire 2009 PGA season because he was honest enough to admit that he mistakenly broke a few rules regarding ball use. What is crazy and a bit unnerving is that he could have easily gotten away with it and if no one raised a big stink about it, people may not have cared. Hayes is a golfer who has already pulled in $7 million of career income and so as the blogger writes, "Knowing you're taking yourself out of the running for a year of career stability and wealth takes some serious situational ethics." In an age where professional athletes are so vilified for being selfish, egotistical cheaters, an athlete who stands up for the integrity of his sport, but more importantly, his personal integrity is quite refreshing. It's gotta be that this guy lives for something more important than money and comfort because if that was his top priority, my guess is that he would have taken a chance just to let things "slide" or else just blame his caddy, which he didn't.

How often do we let things "slide" in our personal life? Things that we know are "technically wrong," but no one would really care about, seem to be the toughest things to work out (read: illegal downloading, cheating, speeding??). I'm not saying these are mortal sins or anything (I couldn't even if I wanted to), but it makes me wonder how much clearer we would be able to hear Jesus speaking to us without all this rationalization, get-ahead attitude junk muddying up the waters.

Genes Explain Everything

John Cleese is an awesome comedic actor and here he parodies those who over-emphasize the role of genes and how they explain human behavior. Funny stuff =).



Personally, I believe genes definitely play a key role, but boiling who we are down to strictly nature or nurture is overly simplistic and denies the dignity of who we are as humans and how God created us. Dr. Francis S. Collins (a key leader in the Human Genome Project), in the context of a study of the link between sexual orientation and identical twins, suggests that, "whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations." Aside from the scientific nature of the study, from a purely experiential level, I feel like that strikes a nice balance between nature vs nurture. We all have God's goodness stamped in the very fabric of our bodies, but at the same time, we all have a tendency toward intrinsic moral evils like lust, anger, malice, etc (read: original sin). Ultimately, as we live out our Catholic faith, it requires collaboration of the individual and God's grace to fully become the person God created us to be.