I tend to lose track of the dates during these summer months. In the dentist’s office yesterday morning, I was filling out forms and hazarded a guess that it was sometime around August 9. I was slightly startled, therefore, when my computer calendar informed me later in the evening that it was in fact August twelfth, which means that 1) I had missed the feast day of my patroness, and 2) it was my mother’s birthday. So, although this is a bit belated, I wanted to pay a tribute to them both.

St. Clare is a somewhat retiring figure compared to her colorful male counterpart. She seems to make her reputation largely as St. Francis’ sidekick, famous mostly for her inclusion in the Assisi crowd but far behind Francis when it comes to colorful stories and amazing miracles. There is, of course, the famous monstrance story, but where Francis wandered around, preached to birds, stripped naked for beggars, tamed violent animals, traveled to the Middle East, etc etc, Clare seems mainly to have settled down in Assisi, gathered her Poor Ladies around her, and quietly assumed the mantle of responsibility. It was the custom of the Poor Ladies (they assumed the name “Poor Clares” only on her death) to keep silence most of the time, to hold their eyes downcast, and, of course, to live always in great poverty. And behind that mantle of silence and poverty, St. Clare largely vanishes. The impact of her firm and loving leadership can be seen in the order she established, which gathered scores of women in her lifetime (including her own mother and sister) and continued into the centuries afterwards. But in the drama of Assisi, she remains largely a background figure, always present but usually taken for granted.

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Today is the 40th anniversary of Humanae vitae. Though Paul VI has been and is widely regarded as a less than stellar supreme pontiff, this encyclical gives evidence of the supernatural foundations of the Church: even in the face of overwhelming cultural pressure, Paul VI stood by the perennial truths of the natural law. Even a critic of modern Rome as keen as Romano Amerio had words of praise for Paul VI in connection with Humanae vitae:

It becomes possible to separate conjugal relations from procreation, if one loses sight of the fact that the essential coexistence of the two ends of marriage means that in order to express a perfect union, conjugal relations must remain open to their natural procreative effect. But people now imagine that the full union in which marriage consists can in fact be separated from its natural effect, which is the generation of new life. This view was supported strongly by the majority of the advisory committee which Paul VI set up to examine the question, but the traditional doctrine was maintained despite its opinion. Humanae vitae and Mysterium fidei are the outstanding documents of Paul VI’s pontificate, because in the latter the Pope upheld the core of supernatural dogma, and in the former he upheld the core of the natural law, that is, by the two combined, he upheld the two levels of truth that the Church must maintain.
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An article appeared on the First Things blog yesterday written by Amy Julia Becker, an expectant mother whose older child has Down Syndrome. I’ve been hearing a bit about this of late, and her experience confirmed what I’ve been reading. Now that it’s possible to detect Down Syndrome in utero through amniocentesis, it’s becoming more and more widely assumed that parents should be willing — indeed, may be obligated! — to get tested for this “calamity” and, if the result should come back positive, to spare the child from the difficult life ahead… by killing it.

For the readers of this blog, I hardly need to explain how depraved this is. All the talk among bioethicists about what level of mental retardation would make a life “not worth living” is offensive and absurd. How many people with Down Syndrome, and how many of their families, would declare that their lives were “not worth it”? But, as Becker’s experience attests, many people have internalized this assumption so thoroughly that it doesn’t even occur to them that it might be offensive to ask her, the mother of a child with Down Syndrome, whether she “has done all the screening on this one to find out…”

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An issue that has been raised on this blog is the merit of post-secondary school education. Central to the issue is how the Faith is affected and influenced in the college environment. Evaluating something like this is not easy. Is it possible to effectively and accurately evaluate the academic and social environment as consistent with Catholic teaching and ideals? One possible solution is to attend a Catholic college.

Unfortunately, even a college or university with a Catholic name attached does not guarantee that Catholic ideals and values are upheld and defended.

This disappointing fact has led most of us to agree with Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R., that parents should “send their children to secular colleges and universities that have an active and involved campus ministry loyal to the Catholic faith rather than use what I call a phony Catholic school.”

Not all is lost, however, in the pursuit of higher education. In the same essay from Fr. Groeschel in the Foreword to “Choosing a Catholic College” (pdf link) where this quote is taken from, he says encouragingly: “There is, however, cause for hope, and it is manifested in those oases of Catholicism profiled in this publication.”

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I’ve had a question concerning Natural Family Planning rattling around in my head for awhile, and a conversation I had today with a non-Catholic persuaded me to finally post it. It’s always a little dangerous getting into these controversial waters, but this is an angle of the topic that we’ve never discussed before, and indeed, I haven’t found much discussion of it anywhere. So I thought I might as well open a thread.

To begin, I should define the ‘Stork Method’ for those readers who haven’t been following all our blog discussions since the winter of ‘05. It is a term coined here at the Cornell Society for a Good Time for a method of family planning that involves, basically, learning nothing about fertility, engaging in marital relations as circumstance and personal whim dictate, and accepting whatever children happen to be conceived thereby. It is recommended by certain members of our Society as the most virtuous means of building a family. Not knowing exactly their mind on the subject I cannot promise to accurately summarize their reasons for endorsing the Stork Method; certainly one interest is to shun utterly any possibility of using NFP as a means of pregnancy avoidance without sufficiently grave reasons. I think, though, that the idea may go deeper than this, and entail a rejection of the idea of ‘family planning’ generally. Proponents of this plan like the idea that children come in God’s time and not ours. They are affronted by the idea that they themselves should assume control over such a sacred event as conception (which does, after all, bring a new soul into existence.) Thus, the Stork Method endeavors to leave the matter in God’s hands.

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