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].
I have probably already mentioned this, but if you’re not reading Musum Pontificalis regularly, you’re really missing out on a great parody site. The basic idea: The pope blogs. And responds in the comments. Don’t worry—it’s gentle and clean.
Here the good Papa takes on reality TV shows. Read the comments.
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More comments on the Donor 1047 story that I linked a few days ago, over at Family Scholars Blog:
So, yes, it is [the children’s] right to know their genetic heritage.
But, as
adults, is it *our* right to intentionally create children who must go
through such an agonizing search, and who we all know, from the start,
will never have the opportunity to grow up with the father who made
them?
And there’s this great essay—actually just a portion of an essay—wondering about the reason behind the latest string of sperm-donor-as-hero stories:
In all these stories, one common conceit emerges: a cold-cash transaction has been elevated into a gift relationship….
For at least a decade, there has been growing national concern about
the trend of “father absence.” …How then can we explain the
glorification of the “donor dad”–the most absent of all absent fathers?
The author thinks it’s because an increasing number of the customers are women—single women and households of two women—who can provide no father figure at all. Hence the imaginary, maintenance free, trouble free, shadow-father.
Genesis 2:24:
…a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body [some translations: "one flesh."]
John 1:14:
And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us…
John 6:51, coupled with 1 Corinthians 11:23-24:
…the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.
…the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, "This is my body…’
Instance #1: Two individual and complete human beings become one flesh, or one body.
Instance #2: The second person of the Trinity—the Word—becomes flesh.
Instance #3: Bread becomes body, or flesh (in fact, the same flesh as in Instance #2).
Can reflection on any of these instances shed light on the others? One thing that I noticed is that the three "substances" that become flesh occupy three different planes of life: bread (being baked) is not living but is made from plant life, i.e. non-sentient life; a pair of individual human beings are living, sentient human life, each endowed with a soul, and also (by virtue of their being two of them) a small community or social life; the Word is the divine life.
What more can be said of this?
The details are unimportant, so no direct quotes or links. But I swear that on MPR this morning, I heard one man dismiss as worthless another man’s research because "his sample was completely unscientific and random."
When I read this meditation from Our World and Welcome To It, I knew I had to blog it—just so I wouldn’t forget it:
But what does it mean to love Jesus more than yourself? …[h]ow would one really know that they love Jesus more than themselves? Do you love Jesus more than your spouse, for example?
…[O]ne way to check your love for Jesus is to think back to the last time you had this thought run through your mind:
"I really shouldn’t be saying [or doing] this."
Now, I’m not necessarily talking about a major sin, here (although it certainly applies to breaking any one of the Ten Commandments). What I’m really thinking about is the urge to say something nasty about somebody at work, or the desire for that extra piece of cake even though the doctor’s told us to try and watch our weight. Something more subtle, in other words. But it’s a perfect opportunity for us to ask ourselves the question "Is this a test of how much I love Jesus?"
…[I]n thinking of how to show our love for Jesus, particularly in wondering if we love Him more than we do ourselves, we should look at these small things as opportunities to prove to ourselves how much we love Him.
So let’s look at that little temptation we’re facing. Maybe it’s not a big deal, maybe it won’t hurt anyone, but I know it’s not the right thing to do. It’s unbecoming to me, it’s beneath my dignity. I may not have changed my mind about how I feel, I might even be justified under the circumstances, but I’m going to purposely refrain from doing it, even though I really want to do it, even though it will make me feel better – because I’m more interested in making Jesus feel better than I am myself.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I probably heard it at least five times today that I can remember, that little voice saying "I really shouldn’t be doing this, but…"
And I’ll hear it again tomorrow. Thanks for pointing out the opportunity.
Here and here I write about how techniques of artificial conception, which supposedly violate the right of the child to "be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents" (Donum Vitae), raise a question that I have trouble comprehending:
Is it, in fact, possible to violate a right that does not yet exist, by an act that brings about the existence of those rights? Apparently so. Wrap your mind about that particular moral time warp.
We see darkly through time’s glass. Maybe, just maybe, this will make more sense in a perspective where time itself has no meaning.
Just a thought: Does it seem to make more sense if instead of speaking negatively of "violating" rights (or potential rights), we speak positively of "respecting" rights (or potential rights)?
So that the question becomes: Is it possible to respect a right that does not exist, by refraining from an act that might (if it were engaged in) bring about the existence of that right?
I might have to think about that a little more. Can I, through some choice of actions, be said to act in a way that respects the rights of people who are not yet conceived, and who might in fact never be conceived? Or is that nonsense?
I forgot to check the Proper of Seasons today, so when I started Morning Prayer today (at quarter to eleven) I used the prayers for Monday, Week 1 instead of the ones for today’s memorial.
I’m kind of glad I made that mistake, though. I was tempted to skip prayer, after I got such a late start, and also tempted to work on private projects this afternoon instead of my Monday housework. But I resolved to stick to my Rule, to fulfill my first priority (prayer) before doing anything else, and to do the work I plan to do every Monday, trusting that there would be time to do my "own thing" later.
The Reading for Monday, Week 1, Morning Prayer, is from 2 Thessalonians, Chapter 3. (The quote here is transcribed from my breviary—I’m not sure why it’s different—earlier edition of the NAB?)
Anyone who would not work should not eat. We hear that some of you are unruly, not keeping busy but acting like busy-bodies. We enjoin all such, and we urge them strongly in the Lord Jesus Christ, to earn the food they eat by working quietly. You must never grow weary of doing what is right, brothers.
Roger. Thanks. OK, back to work.
UPDATE 8/8/07. One of the individuals named in the NYT story quoted below has contacted me and asked that I delete their names. This person says that the NYT reporter mischaracterized the situation terribly, so the person is trying to reduce the embarrassment and fallout from it and wants this post to stop coming up when people Google the names. That’s the reason for the bracketed substitutions.
This story from the NYT (reprinted in the Strib) about unmarried couples seeking "couples therapy" struck me as kind of creepy.
[WOMAN’S NAME] and [MAN’S NAME] met two years ago while teaching at a high school in Amherst, N.H. They planned to move in together at the start of the school year. But two weeks before the move [MAN’S NAME], 28, dropped a bomb. He didn’t want to go ahead with it. In fact he didn’t know if he wanted to be with [WOMAN’S NAME] at all….
Finally [MAN’S NAME] decided he wanted to stay together and to marry. [WOMAN’S NAME] put forth conditions: He had to write a letter of apology to her parents; he had to cut down on his "frat-boy activities," and he had to agree to go to couples therapy. He agreed.
The article never mentions what [he] did to [her] parents that required an apology.
At first I thought that it was [he] and [she] who were so creepy, rather than the idea of couples therapy itself.
But wait. It would be a mistake to equate this with what is known as "premarital counseling"—which is designed to guide a couple through the discussions that should take place during an engagement, in order to prepare them adequately for marriage.
For unwed couples encountering problems and who have decided, at least for the moment, not to break up, therapy serves as a sort of vetting system for the relationship, a role once taken by parents or religion. Today, couples seek a therapist not just to manage a crisis — for volatile arguments, when infidelity has occurred, when one person wants a commitment but the other is reluctant — but often, experts say, as validation: a second opinion on whether the relationship has legs.
I wonder if it really means "I have now realized that marrying you would be a mistake. I should find out if you are likely to change, before I have to admit that we need to sell our house and divide up our stuff."
I thought this statement was alarming, though:
Psychotherapy techniques for young, unmarried couples are no different from those for marital therapy.
In other words, marriage therapists approach married couples with the same ideas, techniques, suggestions, attitudes that they would approach young, unmarried couples?
There’s no difference in the eyes of therapists between "we’re married" and "we split the rent?" The level of commitment is assumed to be the same?
At least the therapists that the NYT writer, Zoe Wolff, bothered to interview and quote. If I were a dedicated pro-marriage therapist—and there are many out there—I’d be pretty annoyed that nobody bothered to get a quote from a therapist with the opinion that married couples are essentially different from couples who are not married.
From the practical point of view of the therapist, the answer to a very important question changes: In what circumstances is it ethical for a therapist to recommend that the couple separate?
John Allen writes that Pope Benedict XVI has demonstrated that his attitude towards young people is as if they were, well, people.
Despite the fact that professional pedagogues spend a lot of time worrying about whether material is "age-appropriate" or "relevant," somewhere along the line most people have had a teacher who stands out precisely because she or he refused to assume that young people are incapable of adult thought. They acted as if young people ought to be perfectly equipped to read Flaubert, or to do advanced calculus, or to master organic chemistry, and that faith often pushed their students beyond mediocrity.
Share NCR with your Friends…Such teachers pay young people the compliment of not patronizing them.
After the 20th World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, Pope Benedict XVI seems to be emerging as that kind of pope.
In a world of rapid-fire, MTV-style cutaways in television programs and movies, driven by the assumption that young people have limited attention spans and thus little capacity for following a line of thought, Pope Benedict made no apologies Sunday morning for veering into a lengthy exegesis of the Greek word proskynesis and the Latin adoratio. (He later tossed in a Hebrew term, beracha, to boot). He used words such as "positivism" and "transmute" without bothering to explain them…
Many will come away inspired because this man, whom most of the World Youth Day participants regard as brilliant and holy, didn’t water his thinking down. He didn’t act as if he was saving his best stuff for someone else — he assumed these young people were capable of meaty content.
I like the line about "professional pedagogues." So much of the spiritual material directed toward young people assumes that it has to put on a young mask—which is really the product of an adult’s distorted imagination. People, including young people of course, can spot that fake a mile off. Can’t the Gospel be spread intact even to children?
Sounds like Benedict is going to speak his message without trying to simplify it.
I’m reading the books Truth and Tolerance and Introduction to Christianity right now. I picked them almost at random, the first because it sounded topical, the second because it sounded, well, introductory. (I was half right!)
I hope I get a chance to blog them. They are both very dense, compared to most of the Catholic reading I do. But they are also studded with gems—tiny moments of I never thought about it that way. That’s amazing.
I really want to sit here and blog, but I have to turn ten pounds of tomatoes into soup today.
So instead, go read Tim Blake’s wrapup of WYD. Start here and scroll around. Great photos.
[Q. Why doesn’t the tomato soup excite you, Erin? The toddler’s asleep, the 5yo is outside, and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me is on the radio. Tempus fugit!
A. I have to blanch, peel, and seed the darned things. An hour from now I’ll have a rash up to the elbows. You know, tomatoes belong to the nightshade family.]
The last post was primarily about homologous artificial conception techniques. These are techniques in which egg and sperm are obtained from the spouses who will raise the hoped-for child, so that the child that results from such a conception is the biological son or daughter of the spouses who undergo the procedure.
Heterologous artificial conception raises problems additional to those brought about by homologous artificial conception. From Donum Vitae again:
Heterologous artificial fertilization violates the rights of the child; it deprives him of his filial relationship with his parental origins and can hinder the maturing of his personal identity. Furthermore, it offends the common vocation of the spouses who are called to fatherhood and motherhood: it objectively deprives conjugal fruitfulness of its unity and integrity; it brings about and manifests a rupture between genetic parenthood, gestational parenthood and responsibility for upbringing. Such damage to the personal relationships within the family has repercussions on civil society: what threatens the unity and stability of the family is a source of dissension, disorder and injustice in the whole of social life.
This article in today’s Star Tribune is about heterologous artificial conception. To read it is to see the effects described in the above paragraph.
The children described in the article were all conceived artificially using sperm from the same anonymous donor. They are, therefore, biological half-siblings.
"Every once in a while I have to sit back and laugh at the brave new world we’re in," said Ager, who lives in Chetek, Wis., 360 miles from Forsberg’s home in Luverne, Minn. "Just the idea that my son was conceived by an egg that matured in 2002 and sperm that had been donated in 1992, exactly 10 years before."
…In preschool, every time she drew pictures of her family, she painstakingly penned 21 babies in diapers, despite the fact that Zach was her only sibling. At the time, Forsberg had no idea that Zoe might be right.
For a long time Ager calculated that Donor 1047 had at least 21 offspring, mostly in the Upper Midwest. But when she took a closer look at CLI data, she has come to believe that his offspring could number more than 100.
"This guy was prolific. He was like Robo Donor," Ager said.
How strange.
The children react in ways that seem telling to me:
Zach, who reads at college level but has a hard time expressing feelings, got a zero on a seventh-grade English assignment to write about his family tree. He hadn’t turned in the assignment because he didn’t know about his donor’s family and refused to list [the family of the father who raises him.]
[UPDATE. Zach’s mom wrote in the comments to give an explanation for this—be sure to read what she has to say.] Here, as in other places, more confusion between "gift" and "sale:"
Both women are endlessly grateful for what they consider Donor 1047’s selfless gift.
But, as the article notes, Donor 1047 was paid more than $150 for each session of masturbation. It’s supposedly illegal to pay such that "the monetary incentive… is the prime factor" for a "donor," probably to keep up the illusion that this is donation, not trafficking. Yet men with desirable genetic traits are paid more for their sperm compensated more generously for their time. Hm. Sounds like the money’s for the goods, not the service.
Whew. If you really want to be amazed at this brave new world, Google "sperm donor" and read some of the stuff that’s out there, especially the ads coaxing people to sell their genetic material.
UPDATE. Be sure to read the comments for some perspectives from some parents who’ve gone this route.
UPDATE, II. More on the same article linked through here.
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