Cadaver Shows: Voyeuristic or Educational?

A friend of mine just sent me this news article, announcing that France has banned a controversial human body exhibit, primarily because the producers of the show can't verify the origin of the bodies.

This exhibit, though inspired by the internationally known "Body Worlds" creator and inventor of plastination, Gunther von Hagens, is not one of his shows. He knows better than to skimp on the paper trail. He's got the paper trail down to a science. He doesn't even have to rely on the Chinese to provide him bodies since he's already got a list of over 6,500 mostly Europeans who hope to donate their bodies to him once they've slipped this mortal coil. Heck, 60% of the men and 30% of the women have even consented to let him display their bodies copulating or mixing their bodies with parts of an animal's to create a mythological creature.

Back in 2006, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science proudly announced it would be hosting the hugely prosperous traveling exhibit known as "Body Worlds."

At the time, we had a family membership and we would receive advance notice of new exhibits. I was shocked when I read about the upcoming exhibit. You see, we had lived in England from 2000 to 2003 and during that time I'd heard of von Hagens in rather unflattering terms. He was a showman who relished controversy and exhibited his corpses in art museum and erotic shows. "Body Worlds" promised to be a scientific show that would help people of all ages understand and appreciate the wondrous workings of the human body. The museum ethics board, which consisted of representatives from all the major faith groups in the Denver area, including the Archdiocese of Denver, declared it was morally fine because von Hagens had carefully preserved his paper trail showing all the bodies to be displayed had been lawfully obtained. What more could we ask?

I don't know whether or not the ethics panel asked other moralistic questions at the time, such as whether or not it was prudent to display human bodies in various poses including a reclining pregnant woman with her womb sliced open and the unborn baby visible inside. Human bodies, naked, but without skin, displayed for all to see.

I wrote to the director of the museum. I wrote to Archbishop Chaput. I wrote to Dr. Marilyn Coors, a Catholic and ethicist at the University of Colorado. I also wrote an opinion piece for the Denver Rocky Mountain News, which they published in February 27, 2006, in which I compared the "Body Worlds" exhibit to pornography; they both reduce the human person to a collection of body parts. It was only after my opinion piece was published that I heard back from anyone. And the only one I heard from was a publicist from the museum who called to ask me if I would reconsider my request for a refund of my membership which they offered to extend beyond the closing of the "Body Worlds" exhibit. (I accepted).

The day after my opinion piece was published I got a call from a reporter at the Rocky Mountain News. He wanted to ask me some questions about my views. Apparently I was one of only a few who objected to the exhibit. (One of only seven, I'm told). Even the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver was an official supporter of the exhibit and a spokesman for the archbishop is quoted as saying, "...[Von Hagens] should just shut the hell up because he's hurting himself and everybody who's trying to get something good out of this exhibit."


By the way, after Pope John Paul II died, von Hagens offered to plastinate his corpse. The Church declined the offer. Guess they couldn't find anything good about the offer.


None of this really matters to von Hagens because he lives for controversy. Despite some who want him to "shut the hell up," he just keeps going and going and going. The greater the controversy, the better. He put on an erotic show in the red-light district of Amsterdam and invited prostitutes and taxi drivers to come to the show free of charge. Last year, he opened another erotic show in Berlin. His newest displays of shock and awe at first spark controversy, then the furor dies down and he goes on to create something more shocking the next time around. Lady Gaga has announced she will go on tour early next year with some of his cadavers (singing back-up? At least she doesn't have to worry about them upstaging her!) Von Hagens is now selling human body parts by mail order. Not even the Nazis did that. (Although they purportedly made things like lampshades out of Jews' skin). And von Hagens' latest pet project is to open a home for the terminally ill, called the Villa of the Last Breath, where the terminal residents have agreed to let people watch them die.But we're supposed to believe the von Hagens' supporters who proclaim that he's doing his work "for humanity" and his motives are to promote the "democratization of anatomy." For the children's sake.

It's not about the millions and millions of dollars. Really.

Statue of St. Bartholomew, with his own skin, by Marco d'Agrate, 1562 (Duomo di Milano)
from Wikipedia article on St. Bartholomew the Apostle

Perhaps the reason over 30 million people worldwide have flocked to see the corpse shows is because they've lost a sense of the sacred. No more do we reverence the holy saints who died for the faith, whose relics have been preserved for two millennia. Instead, we embrace the cult of the soul-less bodies, and deny them humanity. Christians long ago revered those who died for the faith, such as St. Bartholomew, who is often depicted holding his own skin, since his manner of death was being flayed alive. If you look at ancient depictions of St. Bartholomew, it's amazing how much they resemble the modern day flayed bodies von Hagens takes on the road. But each von Hagens' corpse bears a sign with only von Hagens' name, the artist who created him; individual humanity has been stripped away and replaced with anonymity.


Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said, "As the Church drops certain practices and ideals, the world picks them up and secularizes them. As the rosary is dropped, hippies put them around their necks; as nuns drop the long habits, girls put on maxi-coats; as mysticism is forgotten, youths go in for psychedelic experiences; as Christ is dropped, the theater restores Him as a superstar." Fulton John Sheen (1895-1979), Those Mysterious Priests [1974] 

I would add, as we forget the corporal works of mercy--feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit those in prison, shelter the homeless, visit the sick and bury the dead--the world will pick them up and secularize them.

Family Happenings, or Why I've Been Neglecting the Blog, Update #2

The garden is still half overgrown with weeds. I haven't even attempted to plant anything. Very sad. But life has been crazy busy this summer. Perhaps unusually so with a dear husband working on an intensive PhD program, two successive French exchange students, an engagement and another daughter discerning the religious life.

My life, for now, has been preoccupied with taking care of children, dogs, adult children, a cat, a husband and trying to stay cool in the heat. We've had two medical issues to deal with (successfully avoiding surgery twice!), major car repairs (there goes the new floor fund), a bathroom remodel, two kids sent off to camp and I've finished helping with our regional Catholic Home Education conference. I'm hoping life will be getting back to a more measured pace soon.

Isn't it always the way it goes? You think life will give you a break and slow down in the next phase, but it ends up speeding up, changing direction or just going berserk. Learning to live in the moment, taking each day as it comes and seeing the joy and beauty of creation in all things is what keeps me from going totally schizoid.

1st degree black belt Bernadette, red belt Mom and 2nd degree black belt Edmund.

Oh, and I got my red belt in taekwondo. Being able to kick, punch and yell, "AYEEE YAAA!" can also be very comforting.

Family Happenings, or Why I've Been Neglecting the Blog

Note: I wrote up the following entry some time ago, in June, to explain to a few curious readers why I haven't been blogging.

I love summertime! I can usually be found working in my large vegetable garden, ignoring all other household chores. This summer, however, has proven difficult to find time to devote to my gardening passion. I now have several hundred square feet of 3-4 foot tall weeds that I first must eradicate before I can plant anything. All my seedlings, which I had started indoors in March, suffered from neglect and died. But I can't give up hope. There's always the garden center where I can spend oodles of money to buy lovely tomato and pepper plants and I still have some hope that I can plant some seeds and get something from my patch of dirt.

The dignitaries: Fr. Mitch Pacwa was the graduation speaker at Franciscan University of Steubenville (third from the left, looking down)

There are many excuses I could give for my lack of attention to the garden this summer. Perhaps the best excuse is that the month of May began with a 1450 mile drive (each way) to Steubenville, Ohio, to see the eldest son, Pier, graduate from Franciscan University. He finished his computer science degree (cum laude AND with honors, having completed the Honors Program). Seems like just the other day he was graduating from high school!

We got him and all his gear loaded up on the morning of Mother's Day, then drove for two days home. He was home for only two weeks before he left for his summer internship in Maryland. (Prayers for full-time employment much appreciated!)

the happy grad

Before he left I was able to get his help moving his older sister out of her apartment and into our garage. That is, her stuff was moved into our garage. We don't have a basement, so our oversized garage has become the main storage for our two college grads as they are transitioning into new phases in their lives, as well as our two college gals who have much of their childhood mementos stored in our garage along with all the various and sundry other artifacts one collects when one has ten children. (Why else would we have a dozen or so bicycles in the garage?)

After dear son left, we had to drive 70 miles north to move our next dear daughter, Kateri, from her old basement apartment to her new second story apartment. Fortunately, my dear husband didn't have a class for his PhD that particular Saturday.

Corpus Christi procession in downtown Denver

Next big event was oldest daughter, Maria, getting engaged, followed by her early morning departure to Maryland to begin her summer internship. She returned a mere five days later (for a weekend only) to be the sponsor for her youngest sister Bernadette's confirmation. It was a beautiful Mass with Archbishop Chaput, followed by a very traditional and lovely outdoor Corpus Christi procession around the church building in busy downtown Denver. Later that very same day our first of two French exchange students arrived for a three week stay.

sight seeing at Red Rocks park with one of our French exchange students

An Atheist Conversion Story--LOL!

The Loser Letters by Mary Eberstadt

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


With biting satire and dark humor, Mary Eberstadt puts a new twist on the C.S. Lewis classic, The Screwtape Letters. In this particular tale, A.F. (A Former) Christian writes a series of letters to the top brass in the Atheist world, e.g. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, et al.

The "Loser" in the story is the same Person as the Enemy in Screwtape, i.e. God. Once the reader gets one's head around the fact that this story is topsy-turvy, and it's actually a compliment to be called a "loser," a "crackpot," a "Dull," "unspeakably treacherous," "dangerous," or "mortal enemy," then one begins to fully appreciate the wickedly brilliant sense of humor of Mrs. Eberstadt. And she is not afraid to name names. Besides addressing her letters to her BFFs (Best Friends Forever) in the atheist world and calling them by name: "Messrs. Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, Onfray, Stenger and Others" she also names some of the greatest enemies of atheism: John Paul II, G.K. Chesterton, Fulton Sheen, Elizabeth Anscombe, Mother Teresa, Kit Carson, Dorothy Sayers, Alec Guinness, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Mortimer Adler, Evelyn Waugh, Malcom Muggeridge, Graham Greene, Hilaire Belloc, T.S. Eliot, Robert P. George, Michael Novak, George Weigel, Bernard Nathanson, Antony Flew, Richard John Neuhaus, Germain Grisez, C.S. Lewis, Dinesh D'Souza, David Berlinski and the sonagram machine, to name just a few.

To give you just a taste of her rare wit, here's a sentence...yes, just one sentence, for you to ponder:

You see, if everything You guys and the rest of the Brights said is true; if we Humans really are just some tiny animate fungus on a somewhat larger rock of some kind, however statistically improbable, just orbiting one of those billions and billions of stars that Forebear Carl Sagan liked to talk about; if there really is nothing behind us and nothing ahead, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing at all; if You guys and the other Atheists are right, and all Loser's poets, builders, painters, prophets, believers, and apologists stretching back over three millennia are wrong; if no one else really is watching us, or caring about any of us at all; well then, in this whole random cosmic rave of matter and antimatter, space and time, that just dwarfs every last thing any one of us will ever be or think or do--if that's really what we're talking about here, then one little elective medical procedure, one teeny-tiny exercise of a woman's right to choose by one very insignificant human female like A.F. Christian, shouldn't matter much to anyone, anywhere, ever at all.

Brilliant, isn't it?

And on the wide-range of atheist opinions on the morality of abortion, she gives this adroit observation:

At first, I have to admit, I didn't quite get why everybody should be so North-Korean-election-lopsided about this. After all, we Atheists are supposed to be Freethinkers. We do disagree about some important things, like--well, like nothing I can think of offhand, but I'm sure there's something we don't all think alike about, somewhere. This issue isn't one of them, though.

It is a pleasure to read a book that promotes deep-thinking, yet is easy to read. The ending is satisfying, yet leaves you hungry for more. Thankfully, the author has given us a list of "enemies" from whose work we can choose.

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Top 100 Twitter feeds for Homeschoolers

Check it out: My Twitter feed, which is linked to this blog, has been listed in the Top 100 Twitter Feeds for Homeschoolers!  

A big thank you to OnlineDegrees.net for the mention.

Of Truth and Beauty

God made both Truth and Beauty, yet we humans have managed to confuse these two so that they’re not always clear cut and easy to spot.

Before I was Catholic I wasn’t even sure there was such a thing as objective Truth. I was more of a subjective Truth-seeker. If it seems true to you, then it must be true to you. If it seems true to me (even if my truth is different from yours) then it must be true to me. After all, who are we to claim Divine knowledge and say that we alone have the Truth, and others who are trying to follow God have mistakenly interpreted the scriptures and they only “think” their interpretations are True? But, since there can’t be multiple “Truths” and Truth can’t contradict Truth, there must be one Truth, which means other interpretations are wrong.

But that’s not really what I wanted to write about today. What I wanted to write about today is much more down-to-earth, with only a hint of philosophical edge to it. I want to write about Beauty.

God’s creation is beautiful. He has written beauty into the framework of His creation: from the celestial bodies that we view on a clear summer’s night, to the microscopic designs of a DNA strand; from the fragrant smell of lilacs on a warm spring day to the cool and soothing sounds of a waterfall splashing in a forest glade. Who doesn’t love puppies? Or babies? God’s creation is evident in new life and most of us delight in watching young puppies romp in the pet store window or children blowing soap bubbles. I doubt if we would find much disagreement among people that these things are beautiful.

But I have a problem with beauty when it is dictated by popular culture; specifically when it refers to girls and women and how we should look. Despite 50 years or more of “women’s liberation,” beauty pageants and fashion shows are still popular ways of stereotyping women’s beauty. Perhaps it’s because I’m now approaching 50 myself that I’m finally comfortable enough with my own skin to go on record as opposing these objectifications of women. Yet part of me is still imprisoned by society’s dictations. I still want to lose 20 pounds. I still wear make-up and “do” my hair. I still spend more time mulling over “how I look” than my husband does.

Some programs are trying to make inroads into this issue. Groups like Pure Fashion started out with a noble objective: Help young girls see that true beauty comes from within and that our choices in clothing should reflect that inner beauty. But I’m troubled by the amount of money these girls are asked to invest in their accessories, hair and make-up for these modesty fashion shows. I’m also distressed when I see most of the girls who are chosen to model look very similar to the girls you’d see in a typical teen fashion magazine. Once again, a program whose goal was to transform the idea of beauty reinforces the stereotypical idea of beauty. If that wasn’t enough, the spokeswoman for Pure Fashion herself is drop-dead gorgeous. Tall (5’9”), blonde, size 8 (yes, I read her comps on her website). She’s not just a former fashion model, she IS a fashion model who is married to a model and has three model kids. (Yes, I found that on her website as well).

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying it’s bad to be drop-dead gorgeous. Personally, I’d love to look like her. But that’s the problem. I want my girls to be beautiful from the inside out and not spend inordinate amounts of time or money on making a beautiful façade for the world’s pleasure. I want them to spend inordinate amounts of time making their inner-selves beautiful for God’s pleasure.

I don’t know if women will ever be able to dispose of our preoccupation with outward so-called beauty. We instinctively want to please men (and perhaps prove to other women we’re not homely). Yet, there are hopeful signs. There are young orders of women religious who shun fashionable attire, make-up and hair-dos and don simple habits that somehow transform them all into radiant beauties.

I’m still trying to figure out what true Beauty is. I know it when I see it in creation, but I’m still trying to figure out how to apply that to my life as a woman who wants to look like a 20-something fashion model even into her 50’s and beyond. I fear I may be focusing on the wrong aspect of Beauty. My husband tells me I’m beautiful…even on those days when I don’t feel very beautiful at all. He’ll even tell me I’m beautiful when I wake up in the morning and my hair is wonked up and my eyes are puffy. Maybe he sees something in me that we all need to see within ourselves.

There you have it: the convoluted ramblings of a woman who wants to look like a fashion model but doesn’t want to want to look like a fashion model or have her daughters aspire to look like fashion models.

Obamacare will actually save money

...and global warming is a serious issue we must stop in our lifetime.

Here's the best response to this drivel I've seen:

Randomness

Shock and Awe

My husband just started a PhD program in systems engineering. The nice thing about it is he gets to do it from home...in his jammies! (A homeschoolers dream PhD.) He has two live classes every Saturday from 9 to 5 that he views online along with students from across the globe. Welcome to the 21st century.

The students can see the professors via a live video feed, but they can't see each other. Thus, for his presentation next Saturday he has decided to put up a picture of himself. I tried to convince him to let me take a professional shot, but he opted for the "casual Dad" look and is going to use the picture from my blog. You know, the one where you can hardly see him peeking out from behind all those people. I'm thinking stealth mode would be way better, but he's all for the "shock and awe" approach.

I didn't know you could do that!

Last night I convinced my dear husband to take a break from his homework overload and take me out swing dancing. I had promised a friend we'd help chaperone at her daughter's 16th birthday celebration which was held at a grungy-looking New Age cafe near Denver's largest homeless shelter. Yes, the place looks creepy on the outside, but on Sunday nights they have all-age dancing and free dance lessons before the live band plays swing tunes.

It was pouring rain and we were tired by the time we left the house for downtown. When we got there, we realized we didn't have the right change for the parking meter, so we first went inside to get change. Within minutes of my husband leaving to pay for the parking, an older gentleman asked me to dance. I was totally taken off-guard and politely declined his request. I was also slightly embarrassed for being asked to dance. I didn't want to look like I was there looking for a date! Later, I realized that most of the gentlemen who were there dancing seemed to be looking for a dance partner rather than any long-term commitment. Still, it was the first time I'd been asked to dance by a total stranger since I was single!

To make a long story short, we had a great time dancing and had the best compliment from our 14 year-old daughter, when she said, "I didn't know you guys could swing dance!"

We can't really swing dance. We just fake it.

Celebrate Earth's greatest resource this Earth Day

Just in time for Earth Day, a thought-provoking and eye-catching new ad from CatholicVote.org:

St. Padre Pio: The Holy Man of the Gargano

Padre Pio: The True Story by Bernard C. Ruffin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
When I was a naval officer stationed in Naples, Italy in the late 1980's, my fiancé and I once took a road trip eastward, across the boot of Italy, just to see what was on the other side. Our destination was the Gargano peninsula, the odd-shaped "spur" of the boot that sticks out into the Adriatic Sea and an ancient sea port called Manfredonia.


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On our way there,we saw a huge billboard with a picture of a gray-haired priest, with his hands wrapped in bandages. The billboard said something in Italian roughly translated, "See San Giovanni Rotondo! The home of Padre Pio!"

"Who's Padre Pio?" I asked my fiancé.

"Some priest--I think he has the stigmata," was my beloved's reply.

We drove on.

Several years later I finally learned who Padre Pio was. I read Padre Pio: The True Story. My own copy was published in 1982 and it was perhaps 1990 when I read it. I think it's time for a re-reading.

I pulled it off the shelf yesterday, (when I was writing the post about guardian angels) blew the dust off the cover and began randomly reading it. I'm not sure what is more amazing about this book; the stories of bi-locutions, miraculous healings and spiritual warfare that gives Padre Pio bruises, or the fact that this book was written by a devout Lutheran pastor, C. Bernard Ruffin.

I compared the introduction in my 1982 version with the introduction (available on Google books) in the 1991 revised and expanded edition. I noticed Ruffin left out this section in the new edition:

"My experience in visiting San Giovanni Rotondo--seeing the tomb of Padre Pio, visiting his cell, being shown where he heard confessions and where he ate in the friary refectory--was similar to that of visiting Mount Vernon or Monticello, or like my visit to the sites associated with the founder of my own denomination, Martin Luther, in East Germany..."

I suppose if we had pulled off the main highway and driven to San Giovanni Rotondo that day, I would have had a similar experience. I wasn't Catholic and I really had no clue what the stigmata was or why I should even care about Padre Pio.

Since Ruffin left that section out of the newer edition, I can only assume his thoughts had changed or he decided it didn't matter what his personal thoughts were. What mattered was his telling of the facts surrounding the life of Padre Pio.

I'm putting the new edition on my "to read" list because this is a powerful story that is worth re-reading. And if I ever get back to southern Italy, you can bet I'm taking the detour to San Giovanni Rotondo! Home of Padre Pio!

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Of Fairies and Guardian Angels

Fra Angelico. The Last Judgement. Detail: The Blessed. c.1431. Tempera on wood. 105 x 210 cm. Museo di San Marco, Florence, Italy. 

I grew up a non-church-going Protestant with proper Protestant sensibilities. At least I think that's what I had.

I believed in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny and had nightmares that the Big Bad Wolf was going to eat me. In my mind, this fairy-tale world was quite real and alive to me and no one could've convinced me otherwise.

Until the day I found out who really brought the presents at Christmas and replaced my baby tooth with a shiny coin and left me a big chocolate bunny on Easter morning. To say I was crushed is putting it mildly.

Nevertheless, deep within the recesses of my mind I still had the notion of something unseen that was real. Something or someone other than God (whom I knew without a doubt was real) would whisper cautions or give me sudden course corrections. I believe the Holy Spirit leads us and guides us, but this notion I had persisted alongside my belief in the guidance of the Holy Spirit. For as long as I remember, I've had a deeply felt belief in a guardian angel who protected me on more than one occasion. Until now, I've only spoken about it to a very few people besides my husband and kids.

Keep in mind--I had never been taught this by anyone as far as I know. My belief in guardian angels persisted even when I was an adult Protestant with anti-Catholic tendencies. I knew that some being had stopped that car from hitting me when I was riding my bike on a crowded street in Annapolis with roads barely wide enough for cars. I knew that someone had caused my friend to hit the brakes on her car just in time to avoid a collision with another vehicle when I was in the car with her. And I have very vivid memories of driving home from a 12+ hour shift in Naples, Italy when I had a bad case of the flu and a raging fever and all I wanted to do was go home and go to bed and I entered a tunnel on the Tangenziale then a woke suddenly just as my car was exiting the tunnel and crossing several lanes of traffic. Someone had wakened me. I knew it and I said "Thank you!" aloud to whomever it was and I made it home safely with my heart beating wildly with the sudden knowledge that I had nearly died had it not been for my guardian angel. After each of these incidents my first and foremost thought was that my guardian angel had saved me.

I never spoke these thoughts to anyone until after I had been a Catholic for several years. I was married with three children, and I was out of the Navy and living in Virginia. I was visiting with some other Catholic moms with young children and I said something to the effect of, "It's too bad guardian angels are just a fairy tale. It would be so wonderful if they were real." (See, that's what my conscious mind would always tell my subconscious mind once the adrenaline would wear off after one of my "near death" experiences).

My two friends looked at me like I was crazy. They laughed and said, "But they are real!"

I was stunned, but delighted to hear the news.

Nevertheless, I needed verification of this information since my Protestant Bible-only-as-proof beliefs still told me I had to have some scriptural proof of this in order to really believe it. It didn't take very long before I read that Matthew 18:10 is the passage generally cited as evidence that each of us has a personal guardian angel. I know many Protestants don't accept that idea or even see it as a necessity because if God is for us, who can be against us? Of course, God doesn't need to give us guardian angels. He doesn't need to give us parents or teachers either. He could have just made us as fully functioning adults, or as quickly maturing adults rather than children for 18 years. Wouldn't that have made more sense? Why spend 18 years (or more) of our short human lives being dependent on another? But He made us dependent on parents and teachers to help us mature to adulthood.

I don't know why it is part of God's divine plan to give us guardian angels. But the thought of it gives me joy and helps me to know I am always looked after and will there will always be someone there to watch over me. I like the fact that not only does each of us have a guardian angel, but sometimes cities and nations do as well. When I was pregnant, I felt rather blessed because I had two guardian angels, since one of them was my unborn child's. I thought it would be super neat to be carrying twins, because then I could walk around with three guardian angels tagging along.

Parents, make full use of your children's guardian angels. They can be invoked to watch kids (along with the babysitter) when you're not around, or to keep an eye on sick kids when you're asleep, or help kids find missing shoes when they're running late for school, or even help your college kids stay safe when they're hundreds of miles away from home.

I like to tell my kids some of the stories of St. Padre Pio's guardian angel, whom he could see from the time he was a small boy. Pio often had no one to play with, but "Little Boy" would come and talk to him and play with him. Young Pio knew Little Boy was his guardian angel and he just assumed everyone could see and hear their guardian angel. When Padre Pio grew into adulthood and became a Catholic priest, Little Boy stayed the same and would still come to him and talk to him. (You can read more about St. Pio in C. Bernard Ruffin's book, Padre Pio: The True Story. By the way, Ruffin is a Lutheran minister.)

Here's what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say about angels:

The angels in the life of the Church

334

In the meantime, the whole life of the Church benefits from the mysterious and powerful help of angels.²⁰¹

335

In her liturgy, the Church joins with the angels to adore the thrice-holy God. She invokes their assistance (in the funeral liturgy's In Paradisum deducant te angeli . . . ["May the angels lead you into Paradise . . ."]). Moreover, in the "Cherubic Hymn" of the Byzantine Liturgy, she celebrates the memory of certain angels more particularly (St. Michael, St. Gabriel, St. Raphael, and the guardian angels).

336

From its beginning until death, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession.²⁰² "Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life."²⁰³ Already here on earth the Christian life shares by faith in the blessed company of angels and men united in God.

Catholics believe we each have a guardian angel assigned to us from the first moment of our conception. And I don't think I'm stretching it when I say from the first moment of our conception since we believe the soul is infused into the tiny person at the first moment of conception, it makes sense to me that the tiny person also has a guardian angel. The actual birth is just an event in the life of the person but it is not the birth that makes one a person. Angels, being pure spirits, don't have the limitations of time and space that we do. They are God's messengers and our guardians. What a tremendous help we have in all our struggles! As a mom, I depend upon my guardian angel, especially when I've had a sick child and I'm exhausted. I can sleep soundly knowing my guardian angel will wake me if I am needed. My guardian angel doesn't have to sleep!

I know all this may sound as crazy as fairies to some. Yet there is so much more to life than what we see and know now. "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." (1 Corinthians 13:12.)

Our Catholic tradition tells us that when we die we will finally get to meet our guardian angel and he will lead us joyfully into heaven, telling us all about our countless near misses and we will realize just how tenderly our Heavenly Father cares for us.

Creative Punishment

Have you ever sent your kids to bed without dinner? I've always felt that was too extreme (even though my husband insists he survived to adulthood despite an occasional missed meal). I've been known to slip the kid a glass of milk or a piece of bread when such punishment is warranted.

This, however, is something I can really sink my teeth into. The dramatic flourishes are what makes it so wonderful..."serve on steel prison tray."

My eldest sent me this link and it is too good not to share. The chef describes the recipe as such: "Barely nutritional meal suitable for all miscreant children."

Love it!

Your Kids Time out Lunch