bearing blog

bear – ing n 1 the manner in which one comports oneself; 2 the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~]; 4 pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation; 5 the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

Decline in vocations — does it parallel the decline in marriages?

According to that same NYT article I linked in the last post,

In 25 years, the number of priests in the United States has declined 26 percent, to 42,500, as the number of Roman Catholics rose 29 percent, to 65 million.

Priesthood is not a job: it is a vocation, comparable to marriage. So how has marriage been doing?

Since 1960, the decline of those married among all persons age 15 and older has been twelve percentage points—and over 23 points among black females. It should be noted that these data include both people who have never married and those who have married and then divorced.

…In order partially to control for a decline in married adults simply due to delayed first marriages, we have looked at changes in the percentage of persons age 35 through 44 who were married. Since 1960, there has been a drop of almost 19 percentage points for married men and over 16 points for married women. A slight increase in the percentage of married people in this age group occurred beginning in 1999, for unknown reasons, but this increase now appears to have ended.

The number of marriages, or rather the proportion of marriageable people who are married, has declined too.

I wonder if the root cause is a general fear, not of the priesthood, but of commitment?

Of course, the proper comparison, to evaluate the relative effect on priesthood and on marriage, is this: (decline in number of married men/number of adult men) compared to (decline in number of Roman Catholic priests/number of adult Roman Catholic men).

You could also look at the decline in vocations compared to the decline in marriages. From the marriage article:

Americans have become less likely to marry. This is reflected in a decline of more than 40 percent, from 1970 to 2002, in the annual number of marriages per 1000 unmarried adult women.

A claim (unverified, sorry) quoted in this article says that vocations have declined 60 percent since 1975.

That’s not all that far off. If vocations to marriage AND vocations to the celibate life are both declining sharply, perhaps the decline in vocations to the celibate life is not entirely due to dissatisfaction with the idea of celibacy.

Admittedly, the decline in American marriages is not quite as sharp as the decline in American religious vocations. But the difference is small enough that we should consider them in relation to one another, and not necessarily as independent.

Oct 15, 2005

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Ninety percent of priests are happy in the priesthood and show no regrets.

According to the NYT, U. S. bishops are beginning a program to encourage priests to recommend the priesthood to young men. Only one in three priests, the article reports, actively encourage young men to enter the priesthood.

Father Burns[, executive director of the bishops’ Secretariat for Vocations and Priestly Formation, ]said polls showed that 90 percent of priests were happy in the priesthood and had no regrets.

But many priests believe that "morale is low for everyone else," he said, so they hesitate to encourage others to join.

Now where would they have gotten that idea?

(Incidentally: How many Americans in general say they are happy with their jobs? Fifty percent and falling. The priesthood is looking pretty good.

But wait, you say. The priesthood is a vocation, not a job. OK: How many Americans are happy with their marriages? Certainly less than 90 percent. And that’s just the currently married, speaking of their current marriages.)

Oct 15, 2005

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SOTHW blogs Caviezel.

Matthew at Shrine of the Holy Whapping blogs about Jim Caviezel’s somewhat-impromptu speaking engagement at the University of Notre Dame. Not your average celebrity-blogging, it’s a surprisingly moving post. Click here and scroll down to the post entitled "Watch This Space."

Caviezel, you may remember, played Christ in Gibson’s Passion:

He dislocated his shoulder, he accidentally tasted two lashes of the whip that left foot-long scars on his back and knocked him to the ground, he got sick, he hung up there, blue with cold, half-naked in the cold November air for weeks as they filmed and re-filmed Christ giving up His spirit to the Father. (I doubt he could have done it if he hadn’t gone to Communion every day–he did this for God, not his career). It’s terrifying enough to think of an ordinary man in this comfy day and age being whipped, even accidentally, or having to feign a crucifixion. It’s terrifying, and frightening. Now multiply that by five thousand percent–and add real nails.

I sometimes think the reason Christ suffered in this world in 33 AD was it was only then that human ingenuity could devise a torture so awful as to make the depth of His Redemption evident.

Great post from one of my favorite, usually funny, Catholic blogs.

Oct 15, 2005

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What to say to Christian friends when they ask you whether your unborn baby is a girl or a boy, if you don’t do ultrasounds or prenatal testing.

Isaiah 45:10 saith:

Woe to him who asks a father, "What are you begetting?" or a woman, "What are you giving birth to?"

(A repost.)

Oct 15, 2005

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Two different takes.

Ann Althouse brought it up, quoting a NYT story:

The groundswell of single women deliberately having babies reflects their increased ability to support a family. It helps, too, that the Internet has done away with the need to leave the house to find a donor. A woman can now select the father of her child from her living room and have his sperm sent directly to her doctor. It is faster and cheaper than adoption, and allows women to bear their own genetic offspring.

She provoked a heated discussion by titling the post, "Female Autonomy: Does it frighten you?" I’m the first in the comments, with Kids need dads. Either Ann doesn’t agree, or she was deliberately provoking her readers. (If the latter, she succeeded — and that’s fine. If the former, well, I’m surprised!) There’s some good stuff in the comments.

David Blankenhorn at Family Scholars Blog linked to the same article. He’s less provocative and more critical, especially of the women’s claims that, because they chose single parenthood, the problems of single parenthood won’t befall them:

I see. None of the traditional problems of one-parent homes apply to these women — (not even the problem of deliberately bringing into this world a child who will never know her father?) — but nevertheless some people are “uneasy” over a practice that “may seem threatening to men’s roles.” Well, that’s one way to put it.

P.S. The more you think about it, the more amazing is this idea that “the usual problems don’t apply.” Right. If there is no father around to begin with, that pretty much does away with the experience (if not the feeling) of “abandonment by fathers.” And if there is only one parent, that certainly means that there won’t be any “parental conflict”! I don’t see how such claims could possibly be any sillier.

Deliberately conceiving a fatherless child or a motherless child is like setting out, deliberately, to genetically engineer and conceive a child with some congenital disability, perhaps something like Down Syndrome, or maybe a missing arm or some kind of congenital blindness, because you’ve always dreamed of bravely raising a disabled child.

Of course, most children with Down Syndrome are aborted, presumably to prevent them from suffering. I am sure there is some irony here.

Oct 15, 2005

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Lactantius.

Part of a series.

Lactantius (260-340), professor of rhetoric, converted during the persecutions. He has been called the "Christian Cicero."

Today’s piece is from Chapter II of his Of the Manner In Which the Persecutors Died. It is a sort of summary of the beginnings of the Christian church, plus a description of contemporary speculation about the fate of Nero.

In the latter days of the Emperor Tiberius, in the consulship of Ruberius Geminus and Fufius Geminus, and on the tenth of the kalends of April, as I find it written, Jesus Christ was crucified by the Jews.

After He had risen again on the third day, He gathered together His apostles, whom fear, at the time of His being laid hold on, had put to flight; and while He sojourned with them forty days, He opened their hearts, interpreted to them the Scripture, which hitherto had been wrapped up in obscurity, ordained and fitted them for the preaching of His word and doctrine, and regulated all things concerning the institutions of the New Testament; and this having been accomplished, a cloud and whirlwind enveloped Him, and caught Him up from the sight of men unto heaven.

His apostles were at that time eleven in number, to whom were added Matthias, in the room of the traitor Judas, and afterwards Paul. Then were they dispersed throughout all the earth to preach the Gospel, as the Lord their Master had commanded them; and during twenty-five years, and until the beginning of the reign of the Emperor Nero, they occupied themselves in laying the foundations of the Church in every province and city.

And while Nero reigned, the Apostle Peter came to Rome, and, through the power of God committed unto him, wrought certain miracles, and, by turning many to the true religion, built up a faithful and stedfast temple unto the Lord. When Nero heard of those things, and observed that not only in Rome, but in every other place, a great multitude revolted daily from the worship of idols, and, condemning their old ways, went over to the new religion, he, an execrable and pernicious tyrant, sprung forward to raze the heavenly temple and destroy the true faith.

He it was who first persecuted the servants of God; he crucified Peter, and slew Paul: nor did he escape with impunity; for God looked on the affliction of His people; and therefore the tyrant, bereaved of authority, and precipitated from the height of empire, suddenly disappeared, and even the burial-place of that noxious wild beast was nowhere to be seen.

This has led some persons of extravagant imagination to suppose that, having been conveyed to a distant region, he is still reserved alive; and to him they apply the Sibylline verses concerning "The fugitive, who slew his own mother, being to come from the uttermost boundaries of the earth;" as if he who was the first should also be the last persecutor, and thus prove the forerunner of Antichrist!

But we ought not to believe those who, affirming that the two prophets Enoch and Elias have been translated into some remote place that they might attend our Lord when He shall come to judgment, also fancy that Nero is to appear hereafter as the forerunner of the devil, when he shall come to lay waste the earth and overthrow mankind.

So some people thought that Nero was sort of miraculously preserved, and would return as the Antichrist! That lends some credence to the idea that the "number of the beast" is meant to be code for the emperor Nero.

Not everyone believes today that Peter came to Rome and was martyred there. But the early Church did, as recorded by the early Christian writers; Lactantius is only one example. He’s only a few generations removed from Peter and the other apostles. Why not rely on this oral tradition?

Oct 12, 2005

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AAP says: Put the baby in your room.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has revised their infant sleep recommendations for the prevention of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Notably:

…there is growing evidence that room sharing (infant sleeping in a crib in parent’s bedroom) is associated with a reduced risk of SIDS. The AAP recommends a separate but proximate sleeping environment.

In other words, while it still recommends cribs, the AAP now recommends that babies sleep in the same room as their parents. I applaud this recommendation, which makes sense on many levels. Because their waking will be heard sooner, babies will cry less and suffer less. Perhaps breastfeeding will become well-established for more newborns, so that fewer mothers will have problems that drive them to give up nursing.

Our family cosleeps. The benefits to us of co-sleeping are apparent, and the risk of SIDS is small (and not at all, to my knowledge, studied in exclusively co-sleeping families — most of the data comes from families who occasionally co-sleep). I personally recommend it to every nonsmoking parent who asks me.

But I am still pleased by the new AAP recommendations. Because they are palatable to the average American, they stand a good chance of becoming the new norm in nighttime baby care — I mean, there is a good chance that the typical newborn will move from the nursery down the hall to the crib a few feet away. That’s a tremendous gain in mother-baby closeness.

Here is another interesting statement. I had no idea that this research even existed:

Research now indicates an association between pacifier use and a reduced risk of SIDS, which is why the revised statement recommends the use of pacifiers at nap time and bedtime throughout the first year of life. The evidence that pacifier use inhibits breastfeeding or causes later dental complications is not compelling enough to discredit the recommendation. However, it is recommended that pacifier introduction for breastfed infants be delayed until one month of age to ensure that breastfeeding is firmly established. In addition, if the infant refuses the pacifier, it should not be forced.

Fascinating! Why do you suppose that a pacifier should reduce the risk of SIDS? Does suckling stimulate breathing, or keep the airway open? Well, my night nursers have always nursed so much when they were small…

I’m pleased to see that they recommend waiting until breastfeeding is firmly established. Do you suppose that this part will be noticed, or will pediatricians just start telling parents, "Use a pacifier. It lowers the risk of SIDS." I hope that they remember that pacifiers do cause problems.

The rest of the recommendations are not very much changed. One part I disagree with has to do with avoiding flat-head:

Avoid development of positional plagiocephaly (flat back of head): Encourage “tummy time.” * Avoid having the infant spend excessive time in car-seat carriers and “bouncers.”

Parents certainly should avoid putting the baby too much in car-seat carriers and bouncers, but the solution isn’t "tummy time" (which is a pleasant-sounding euphemism for "leaving the infant awake face down on the floor"), it’s carrying the baby, in arms or a soft carrier. Get a sling and use it. Better yet, get several. (Here or here are good places to start.)

All in all, pretty good, but — as usual — there’s a general lack of perspective. We should care about total infant mortality, not just SIDS. And morbidity too: good quality breastfeeding prevents so many problems that it’s hard to see why it’s not a higher priority than SIDS. For a while, a major disposable-diaper manufacturer printed diapers with the "Back to Sleep" slogan. Nobody printed "Having trouble breastfeeding? Before you give up, dial 1-800-LALECHE."

Possibility the first: The unexpected, unexplained nature of SIDS scares people more than other causes of infant death and illnesses. Possibility the second: Nobody stands to lose a lot of money if people decide to do what’s best for their babies when it comes to sleep.

UPDATE: Of course, if you look for it on Google News, the headlines are all about the benefits of cribs and pacifiers. Not about the benefits of putting your child in your room, which is surely the change that has the most significant impact on standard U. S. parenting practices.

UPDATE AGAIN: Dumbest headline award goes to the Washington Post, for this gem:

To cut crib deaths, separate beds are urged for babies

Think about it.

Oct 10, 2005

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“Parents have lost touch with the notion that these charts are guidelines, not rules.”

Doctors too, apparently. Well, it’s about time someone pointed this out:

It turns out most advice parents get about weaning infants onto solid foods — even from pediatricians — is more myth than science.

That’s right, rice cereal may not be the best first food. Peanut butter doesn’t have to wait until after the first birthday. Offering fruits before vegetables won’t breed a sweet tooth. And strong spices? Bring ’em on….

"Parents have lost touch with the notion that these charts are guides, not rules," says Rachel Brandeis, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. "Babies start with a very clean palate and it’s your job to mold it."…

The difference is cultural, not scientific, says Dr. Jatinder Bhatia, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ nutrition committee who says the American approach suffers from a Western bias that fails to reflect the nation’s ethnic diversity.

Yep. I remember well, before I became a mother, sitting at lunch with some other graduate students and postdocs. One, an Italian man, had brought his wife and baby son, maybe seven months old. When the food came, the Italian woman pulled the "baby food" from her purse: a whole, raw tomato. I was shocked! But that baby chowed down! I remembered that, and never bothered with prepared baby food for our kids.

Thanks to Danna for the link.

Oct 10, 2005

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Two things went away this week.

1. The white picket fence. We used to own a duplex with a double lot and a garage and a white picket fence. Then, after we paid the City of Minneapolis a bunch of money, it waved the Variance Wand four times, and the property changed into two lots, one with a duplex and one with a garage, all surrounded by a white picket fence. (It will turn back into a pumpkin at midnight on December thirty-first.)

Now the fence is gone, except for the lonely posts. This makes it easier for the backhoes to get in. (Actually, not all that much easier for the backhoes. But our neighbor, who builds fences, promises to give the painted planks a good home. He would not be able to do so for many thousands of partly painted splinters.)

2. The changing table. For the first time in more than five years, I have no children in diapers. This situation will persist, by definition, for at least nine months. So to the basement with you! My bathroom is now much roomier.

We filled the space with laundry baskets. That’s the kind of wild, crazy home decorators we are.

Oct 10, 2005

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Now that he’s out of diapers, he’ll probably start asking for a hair shirt.

Sunday Mass this week ended with Benediction. (The congregation is blessed by a priest who is holding and elevating the Blessed Sacrament. More on this lovely rite here.) I happened to be in the church foyer, because Milo had gotten loud and squirmy in the Communion line, so after receiving I carried him right to the back.

While the Sacrament is exposed, we kneel. It’s understood, of course, that moms with squirmy toddlers can’t always do this, but I usually give it a shot. So I knelt on the carpet where we could see through the doors all the way down the aisle to the altar and held Milo and whispered in his ear, pointing: see the priest? see the altar? see the monstrance?

Another woman was already kneeling there, with a little girl about his age. The girl had flopped down on her belly and was rolling around on the carpet, but she was not bothering anyone, which is the important thing that allowed her mom to remain kneeling. Milo, entranced by the little girl, tore away from me and flopped down next to the little girl. They lay there on their bellies and grinned at each other.

I muttered under my breath, "Okay. Fine. Prostrate is good." I didn’t mean for anyone to hear me, but the little girl’s mother laughed.

I love Benediction. But solemn is just hard to do for longer than a few minutes with a two-year-old.

Oct 10, 2005

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A successful seminary.

A piece on our local seminary, St. John Vianney, and the 100 or so young men studying there. The entering class this year: 49 men. That’s a lot.

There’s no room at SJV for what some call "the beige church" — the "whatever turns you on" spirituality that became popular in the 1970s and ’80s. In Baer’s view, the recent clergy abuse scandals had their roots, in part, in the freewheeling seminaries of those years.

"Today’s young men won’t give their entire lives for a cynical, watered-down life of church work," he says. "Either the priesthood is essential for the salvation of the world, or they’re going to go somewhere else to make a lot more money and have a lot more fun."

Exactly. Who is going to give their whole lives for something if they don’t really believe in it?

…SJV’s watchword is accountability. "The era of the Lone Ranger priest with a secret life has got to end," says Baer. Seminarians meet twice a week in small groups to encourage and support each other. "They take each other to task for things as small as ‘your room is a mess.’ We want them to get used to correcting their brothers."

I like that.

"We’re normal people, average Joes," responds Kregg Hochhalter, a transfer student from the Archdiocese of Bismarck, N.D. St. Thomas football fans can attest to this. At the Tommies’ games, seminarians clad in purple T-shirts lead the crowd in rowdy cheers. Football cocaptain Ben Kessler, an SJV senior named First Team Academic All-American by ESPN the Magazine, was recently featured on Fox Sports Net. Another SJV athlete, Nick Donohue, turned down a chance to become a tennis pro to attend the seminary.

Baer still chuckles about the raucous "half prayer meeting, half pep rally" the seminarians staged after Pope Benedict’s election in April 2005. Campus security guards chased them off a roof, so they led an exuberant procession through the campus, as other students enthusiastically cheered them on.

I know one SJV seminarian — we used to attend the same parish and belonged to a young adults’ group there. When my family switched to a parish with a more traditional reverence for the Eucharist, we ran into Chris there and were pleasantly surprised to find he’d entered the seminary. He’ll be great for the Church, and he doesn’t fit the stereotypes. He’s a techie, he’s got a biting sarcasm, he’s a heck of a lot of fun to have a conversation with. All of these things are perfect for the priesthood, if you ask me.

H/t Amy Welborn.

Oct 10, 2005

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Chicken in foil packets with grated root vegetables.
Dinner tonight in twenty minutes of prep and twenty minutes in the oven:
Grate the sweet potato, onion, carrot, and turnip in the food processor. Salt and pepper to taste. In each square of aluminum foil place about 3/4 to 1 cup of vegetable mixture. Top with chicken breast and slice of tomato. Add salt and pepper and a few drops of balsamic vinegar. Seal packets and bake 20 minutes at 450 degrees F.

Adapted from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. Have with a tossed salad and, if you used lots of pepper, some late harvest Riesling.
Oct 8, 2005

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