Now, I know that I didn't hold much back when Radar's Peter Hyman quizzed me on my lack of a sex life. But I don't see Romenesko calling it "too much information" when newspaper after newspaper details the sexual peccadillos of Spears, Hilton, Lohan, et al. It's only when someone talks in graphic detail about how they haven't had sex that his delicate writerly sensibilities get ruffled.
"Have you ever wanted to hug an author? That's how I felt after reading The Thrill of the Chaste. Dawn Eden shares some intimate and significant moments in her life, as she presents a heartfelt plea urging women to view chastity as an intelligent and legitimate lifestyle. Her words resonant with a startling reality, causing this book to feel like a confidential conversation between friends."
Many thanks to writer Peter Hyman, photographer Nick Rhodes, and the editors of Radar magazine for the feature interview with me that appears today on Radar's Web site (and check out the site's home page for a different photo of me).
Reading and signing: Borders Books and Music, 8027 Leesburg Pike, Suite 100, Vienna, Virginia. 7:30 p.m. Call (703) 556-7766
December 16
Talk and signing for young adult-group: St. Ursula Parish, Baltimore, Md., details to be announced
* * *
Keep an eye on the Appearances section of thrillofthechaste.com to learn if I'm coming to your latitude and longitude.
And here's a repeat of my request for more gigs:
To promote my book, which comes out December 5, I'm planning to do bookstore signings and talks. Several are already lined up, but I'd like to do many more.
My book's target audience is women in their 20s and 30s, so young-adult gatherings and Theology on Tap-type events would be ideal. (I'm already set to speak at the New Haven, Conn., Theology on Tap in January.) Depending on how many appearances can be arranged in a particular region and whether the group sponsoring my appearance is willing to buy copies of my book (which may be purchased in bulk from my publisher at a discount), I would travel anywhere in the country.
I would also like very much to speak at charity fund-raisers, particularly for pregnancy resource centers. I have done one such benefit already, for Hudson, N.Y.'s Alight Center, and it went extremely well. If you would like to book me for an event, please e-mail dawn -at- dawneden.com (replacing -at- with an @).
I just discovered one of the hidden delights of Wikipedia: a history-filled entry on "I'm Henery the Eighth I Am." It links to a download of Harry Champion's 1911 version, which, among other things, answers the question of what happened to the first seven 'Enerys. (Despite Peter Noone's claim, the song's actual second verse is not the same as the first.)
Good luck trying to get that song out of your head.
"Though this isn't for young teens, there's so much good in it, that I plan on sharing it with my daughters some day. Perhaps we'll read it together before they go off to college." [Full review]
"Married sex, though it may not on every single occasion be a blind-man's stunner, is vastly superior in my opinion to sex when single, and being married (especially with children) is infinitely superior to being single and alone.
"I married at thirty and I remember what it was like to be single.
"It sucked. And so did flitting from one chick to another, and not in the good way.
"I think most honest men would say the same thing. Once you grow up you grow up and rotating girlfriends are for kids and the perpetually immature.
"Society is built upon the marriage model not just for pragmatic reasons of child-rearing. It's just a better model for sex and general happiness and having sex inside of marriage is the best circumstance of the better model."
A couple of weeks ago, I had the great pleasure of meeting Phil Rosenthal, lead singer of Twenty Cent Crush, for the first time, and he reminded me of something I'd written when I reviewed his group's first album for New York Press over a decade ago.
"You said my songs were 'sexist,'" he laughed.
How embarrassing. Yeah, that sounds like me — in 1996. Today I would have written "adolescent" and "Knack-influenced" and let the reader fill in the blanks. Well, it could have been worse; I could have written "heterocentric."
At any rate, Phil's songs have grown up; his group's Web site features a sweet tune called "Storytime" that I'm sure was inspired by reading to one of his three kids.
Ann Furedi, the chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), said ... there had been a shift in public opinion about parenthood. The stigma of abortion had diminished but there was now concern about being a poor parent. "Parenting is considered to be very important and is taken seriously these days," she said. "The idea of just drifting into unplanned motherhood is seen not to be a good thing and you could argue that among many groups of people in society abortion is seen as a more responsible response to being a victim of uncontrolled fertility," she said.
From Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization (1922):
"We should not minimize the great outstanding service of Eugenics for critical and diagnostic investigations. It demonstrates, not in terms of glittering generalization but in statistical studies of investigations reduced to measurement and number, that uncontrolled fertility is universally correlated with disease, poverty, overcrowding and the transmission of hereditable taints."
"Eugenics seems to me to be valuable in its critical and diagnostic aspects, in emphasizing the danger of irresponsible and uncontrolled fertility of the 'unfit' and the feeble-minded establishing a progressive unbalance in human society and lowering the birth-rate among the 'fit.'" [Click links to see context.]
If you search the Internet for "uncontrolled fertility," you will find that the overwhelming majority of references to it come from eugenics organizations and their direct descendents that now make up the population-control movement. The term is used by people who believe, as Ferado suggests, that, for the poor, killing an unborn child is "more responsible" than being pregnant.
"I have read somewhere that women long to be rescued. If true, I suppose that might be because we sometimes need rescuing. When I was three, for example, I got my hair caught in a climbing frame and had to wait in the drizzle until my brother alerted my parents. When I was ten or so, I got stuck on the side of a scrubby cliff overlooking a golf course and was rescued by a golfer. And when I was thirty-three and quite literally out of my mind in terror of a (probably) sociopathic boyfriend, I was rescued by my spiritual director. At least, that's how it felt at the time. (I hid in his office and sent a passer-by out for a sandwich.) But that is about it. I have grown used to rescuing myself, and that is probably a good thing."
— Seraphic Single, from her blog entry "No Rescue"
When I was writing my book, I was struck by the contrast between modern-day models of "empowered" single women — like the neurotic nellies of "Sex and the City" — and the truer image of empowerment that I saw in an icon of the past. From Chapter 2 of The Thrill of the Chaste, "Sex and the Witty: Getting a Rise out of Chastity":
Sometimes I wonder myself why I do it. It’s hard to pass up opportunities for no-strings sex. When I have a boyfriend, as I did for six months last year, it’s even harder to keep in mind why it’s important to me to remain chaste until marriage.
The incongruity of the situation is even more striking when I think about what my life would have been like had I been born during my mother’s time. Sure, there were “bad girls” in the Fifties, but saving sex for marriage was nonetheless considered a worthy and attainable goal.
Think about it! America’s sweetheart was Doris Day—the sexy blonde singer and actress who, in the words of film critic David Thomson, “played career women that acted like coy ingenues in what were supposed to be sophisticated comedies.”
During the time of Day’s most popular films—the Fifties through the mid-Sixties—her onscreen purity was so legendary that Hollywood wit Oscar Levant famously quipped, “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.”
Yet, audiences didn’t want her any other way. Women adored how Day appeared bold, independent, willing to take risks, and totally in control of herself. Men simply adored her.
It was the last time chastity was cool.
Here in the 21st century, trying to be like Doris Day—sexy yet modest, confident yet humble, lighthearted yet deep — is simply unhip. However, it’s so unhip that it’s considered downright subversive.
Here's the best Day clip I could find on YouTube, from "Teacher's Pet" (1958), in which a weatherbeaten Clark Gable challenges our heroine's chastity. She plays a college journalism professor; he's a seasoned newspaper editor posing as a student:
Turns out that Eamonn Gaines of the Latin Mass Society of Ireland actually beat me and Matt Alderman onto public airwaves to discuss the Tridentine Mass; you can hear his articulate Nov. 5 interview via his blog (extra points for his great radio voice).
My version of MacColl's tune may be purchased on iTunes, and you can be confident that I'll see no royalties whatsoever — but at least the label that released it invested its vast profits into releasing the Anderson Council's latest album.
A treat for my seminarian friends: Todd Seavey tipped me off to this delightfully bizarro trailer for "The Secret Service," a late-1960s British TV show by Gerry Anderson of "Thunderbirds" fame. There is something downright Chestertonian in the idea of a priest's combating evil by making himself smaller.
The series followed the adventures of Father Stanley Unwin, a priest who moonlights as a secret agent for an organization called B.I.S.H.O.P. (British Intelligence Service Headquarters, Operation Priest). Answering to a man known as "The Bishop", Unwin is partnered with Matthew Harding, who works as his gardener as cover for his espionage work.
Jill of Feministe gives me a nice hat tip as she lists reasons she's thankful. No. 27 sounds tantalizingly mysterious — I'd love to know what makes that one church particularly special.
"Eden is a sort of voice in the wilderness that's the contemporary dating scene. (If you can still call it that, when so many sexual encounters no longer rise to the level of dating -- which, while it may fall short of more traditional forms of courtship, at least entailed the man's public acknowledgment of some kind of relationship with the woman whose sexual favors he was pursuing or enjoying.)"
[It happens to the best of op-ed writers: You compose an up-to-the-minute commentary, and events outpace your punditry. In fact, it doesn't just happen to the best — it happened to me last week, when I wrote about Judith Regan's confession on why she sought O.J. Simpson's confession. Before I could discover whether a third publication would reject the piece, there was no story anymore, thanks to Rupert Murdoch's shocking the world by growing a conscience.
So, following is the op-ed of mine that might have been. In light of what happened, it's interesting that I cynically assumed Regan wouldn't pull the book and TV interview — though it wasn't she herself who did so in the end.]
Judith Regan says that all she wanted to do was bring O.J. Simpson to his knees.
In the face of public outcry against her paying a reported $3.5 million for his If I Did It, the publishing executive released a rambling statement claiming she, having experienced domestic abuse, identified with Simpson’s slain wife. She insisted that her motive for publishing the book and doing a Fox TV interview with Simpson was not to make money, but to gain “closure.” That meant getting the man she called a “killer” to do what Regan says she herself did as a child, when she kneeled in “dark confessional booths”: “I wanted him to confess his sins, to do penance and to amend his life. Amen.”
It wasn’t enough, in Regan’s eyes, that Simpson should confess. She had to be his confessor, acting in place of a priest, who in turn acts in place of God. Except that, like the devilishly savvy businesswoman she is, she cut out the middleman — giving herself a divine mandate to settle an emotional score and show the “consequences of pain and suffering.” With bravado that could make Chuck Norris blush, she shrugs off any hint of wrongdoing in paying Simpson’s representative: “For me, it was personal.”
“This is clearly a woman who has suffered and is suffering inside because she has no depth of feeling and no morality whatsoever.” So said Regan of Monica Lewinsky in 1999, speaking to Fox News after her negotiations to purchase “Monica’s Story” fell through. Even then, the executive’s own “depth of feeling” was noticeably lacking – at least with regard to personal shame.
In words that presaged her Simpson statement, Regan went on to explain why she was adding her voice to those attacking Lewinsky: “I decided, after being involved in this ugly negotiation, which I found morally reprehensible, that we should make fun of the whole thing, and we should make a comment about the amorality of everybody.”
Today, having succeeded in her truly ugly negotiation with Simpson’s representative, Regan once again aims to “make a comment about the amorality of everybody” — everybody but herself, that is. She will conduct her sacrament of penance on Fox TV — the brightly lit studio standing in for a dark confessional while Simpson stands in for her ex-lover and she herself stands in for the Eternal Judge.
Meanwhile, judging by the way she describes going to confession in the past tense (“my parents made me go,” she said in her Simpson statement), Regan hasn’t admitted her sins to a priest — or to anyone else.
“I would never tell,” she told Fox News in 1999. “Unlike Monica Lewinsky, I keep my secrets and take them to the grave.”
Pope John Paul II wrote, “When a man goes down on his knees in the confessional because he has sinned, at that very moment he adds to his own dignity as a man.”
If Regan, even now, were to humble herself, canceling the release of If I Did It — or at least having Fox pull her Simpson interview — admitting she wrongly used her influence to reward a man whom she herself believes to be a murderer, she could regain some of her lost dignity. Instead, in her determination to force Simpson to his knees, she is bringing herself down into the mire – and dragging down with her all who witness the sad spectacle.
Dean Abbott writes about the classic 1960 "Andy Griffith Show" episode "Stranger in Town":
In it, a stranger gets off the bus, walks into the barber shop and addresses Andy, Barney and Floyd by name though he has never met even one of them.
As the episode progresses, we learn he has subscribed to the town's newspaper since returning to his lonely life in New York after "the war." From the paper, he learned about the community and its people and decided to move there.
What was a quaint yearning in 1960, has deepened now into cultural despair. So many of us are this stranger. Our conviction that more is better, that there is better than here, that new is better than old has left us stranded in a world of disconnected cocoon-McMansions and lurid drive-in strip malls.
Look around, the hunger for real community has withered many souls. It's hard to be human all alone. And so, we ride around on that bus, strangers exiled together, hunting restlessly for Mayberry.
The other day, I spoke with a friend who said that her Thanksgiving was going to be "sort of depressing." She was seeing her parents, but all her other relatives had either died or moved away. She would miss the laughter and commotion of Thanksgivings past.
My friend's parents are older, and they may well have reasons for wanting to keep their Thanksgiving dinner small and quiet. For me, however — and I realize it's easy for me to say this, because I've never actually hosted a Thanksgiving dinner — I can't imagine why anyone would have a "depressing" gathering when they could invite someone from their community who lacks family of their own.
If you're reading this and feeling like there will be too many empty spaces at your table tomorrow, why not invite that co-worker, acquaintance, or family who may not already have plans? If you don't know anyone but would like to invite someone who's alone or needy, someone at your church or other faith community may know one who would appreciate the meal and fellowship.
Note: I will be with family for the holiday, so posting will be light-to-nonexistent until Friday night. I also may not be able to respond to e-mail until then. Have a very happy Thanksgiving and God bless. Also, please put in a prayer for Dean Abbott and his wife, because it looks from his blog like he's going to be a new dad any day now.
While my book The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On is due in stores December 5, it's already in the hands of those who ordered it from Amazon or elsewhere. If you're reading it and would like to comment or ask me questions about it, my webmaster, Brett Taylor, has set up a discussion area of thrillofthechaste.com — just click on the site's "Forum" tab.
Thought I'd share some more photos from the day I spent last month at Morning Star House of Prayer, a retreat house in southern New Jersey, near the Delaware River, run by two lovely retired nuns of the Religious Teachers Filippini order.
It rained heavily the night I was at Morning Star, and in the morning I was dazzled to see the trees' newly washed autumn leaves. I snapped dozens of photos; none of them capture the overall beauty of the grounds, but you can get an idea.
The red of this mystery shrub's berries reminded me of the burning bush in Exodus; it also made me think of G.K. Chesterton's description of chastity in "A Piece of Chalk":
Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. In a word, God paints in many colours; but he never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white. In a sense our age has realised this fact, and expressed it in our sullen costume. For if it were really true that white was a blank and colourless thing, negative and non-committal, then white would be used instead of black and grey for the funereal dress of this pessimistic period. Which is not the case.
Of course, no nuns' retreat would be complete without statuary. One of my favorites was the one of Our Lady of Grace.
Wow, I'd forgotten how refreshing these guys were compared to the rest of what passed for alternative music in the late 1980s. Here's They Might Be Giants doing the Lesley Gore classic "Maybe I Know" while guest-hosting on MTV; the video's badly out of synch, but the sound quality is fine. I love it that they dared to cover a great Brill Building-era pop tune without resorting to hipster irony.
I just stumbled upon a fascinating Wikipedia article on the term "sign of contradiction." Now I want to read John Paul the Great's book of the same name. They never taught this stuff in RCIA.
New heart-repair treatment more effective — and safer — than stem cells
I have a very special reason for being elated about this BBC News report of a study done with mice that is believed to have strong implications for humans:
Scientists have shown that cells in the heart's outer layer can migrate deeper into a failing organ to carry out essential repairs.
The migration of progenitor cells is controlled by a protein called thymosin beta 4, already known to help reduce muscle cell loss after a heart attack.
The discovery opens up the possibility of using the protein to develop more effective treatments for heart disease.
The University College London (UCL) study appears in the journal Nature. ... The UCL team discovered that under the influence of thymosin ß4, progenitor cells in the outermost layer of the heart can be stimulated to form new blood vessels. ...
Lead researcher Dr Paul Riley said: "We found that, when treated with thymosin ß4, these adult cells have as much potential as embryonic cells to create healthy heart tissue."
Dr Riley said using thymosin ß4 could lead to a more effective way to repair damaged hearts.
He said: "Our research has shown that blood vessel regeneration is still possible in the adult heart.
"In the future if we can figure out how to direct the progenitor cells using thymosin ß4, there could be potential for therapy based on the patients' own heart cells.
"This approach would bypass the risk of immune system rejection, a major problem with the use of stem cell transplants from another source.
"And, it has the added benefit that the cells are already located in the right place - within the heart itself."
The study was funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and the Medical Research Council (MRC).
Professor Jeremy Pearson, BHF associate medical director, said: "These results are important and exciting.
"By identifying for the first time a molecule that can cause cells in the adult heart to form new blood vessels, Dr Riley's group have taken a large step towards practical therapy to encourage damaged hearts to repair themselves, a goal that researchers are urgently aiming for."
Thymosin ß4 was co-discovered by my dad. I am so proud and happy for him.
My friend Drusilla of Heirs in Hope, who is originally from Brazil, writes about witnessing her grandfather's murder at the hands of the junta — and tells how the memory of it led to an uncomfortable yet beautiful revelation. Hers is truly a rare and stunning new voice in the blog world.
Going to the chaplain and we're ... gonna get hoodwinked
By Guestblogger C.J.
Is Planned Parenthood a faith-based organization? The Dawn Patrol has reported on Planned Parenthood's efforts to get cozy with pro-abortion church groups, but examples of how the nation's leading abortion chain is positioning itself as in sync with religion are on the increase.
Planned Parenthood's New York City affiliate is showing how this is done in a most subtle way on a web page devoted to promoting birth control. In addition to a group of ethnically diverse posters that push contraception, PPNYC is offering free "planning is power" buttons that are available to hand out at your "office, organization or religious institution" (right along with votive candles and rosaries? Hmm. Don't think so).
More Planned Parenthood affiliates are now employing chaplains. Planned Parenthood Golden Gate (yes, the folks who shot pro-life demonstrators with a condom bazooka in an online cartoon) even offers an online form where one can make a confidential appointment with Chaplain Lisa, who will call teenagers at home surreptitiously to guarantee that Mom won't get suspicious.
Planned Parenthood knows an opening when it sees one. It was recently reported that even among Catholics, the bishops admit that 96% of married couples of childbearing age employ some type of birth control that runs counter to church teachings, all the while considering themselves good Catholics, no doubt.
This is what those who promote chastity are up against. All this talk of religion is designed to shore up the Planned Parenthood view that birth control and abortion are mere "choices," not the grave and intrinsic evils referred to in Catholic teaching. The bishops' statistics unfortunately suggest that Planned Parenthood has an audience that is willing to pay attention -- even among people who should be listening to a higher Authority instead of Chaplain Lisa.
"This frank, funny, and frightening tale of sex in the city by a journalist, rock-trivia maven, and Christian convert may be the perfect Christmas gift for that ungrateful teenager of yours who stays out till all hours of the night supposedly at some 'concert' when in fact she's probably doing YOU KNOW WHAT in some motel out by the airport to the sounds of Satan's cackle as it echoes down the lonely gray highways of a life thrown away because of some idiot in a Kurt Cobain T-shirt and a car he paid for by selling smack to crippled kids in the parking lot of St. Jude's Children's Hospital! Damn him! Damn him to hell!"
Calling Los Angelenos: An L.A. pro-life advocate is offering to donate my airfare if I donate my services to speak in that city at a fund-raiser for a pregnancy center that gives much-needed resources and referrals to poor women who choose to bring their children to term. I would be honored to speak at the fund-raiser; now we need a venue and local media who would promote my talk.
The donor has approached a possible venue, but any suggestions would be welcome — especially if you have a personal contact at the place. Also, if you have any personal connections with L.A.-area media, including college newspapers or radio shows, that would like to interview me or otherwise promote the fund-raiser, that would help a great deal. Please leave a comment or e-mail me at dawn -at- dawneden.com (replacing the -at- with an @). Thank you.
"The Rolling Stones recent hit record came up in conversation, titled 'It's Only Rock N Roll.' We started talking about how much we 'loved rock n roll,' and asked each other 'how could the Stones apologize for rock music in that way?'"
Two super reviews hit the blogs yesterday from writers who received advance copies. From Kristine Steakley of The Point, the official blog of Chuck Colson's BreakPoint:
While chastity might not seem all that thrilling, Eden manages to make all the biblically correct arguments for living a single life in obedience to God's rules for sex without being prudish or naive. Eden tells her own story of coming to Christ at the age of 31 and the struggle of learning how to live this new life of service to God instead of slavery to one's passions. She talks honestly about the messages the world offers ("Just believe in yourself") and the hopelessness they engender. "It's not hard," she writes, "for me to find someone to love the me I love. What I never imagined before I was chaste was that I could hope to find someone to love the me I don't love." [Read the full review.]
And from Paul Catalanotto of Alive and Young, who received his advance copy so that he might book me for a talk in the parish where he is a religious educator (it's in the works):
The Thrill of the Chaste is a book that has been needed for many years to fill an absence in the chastity literature [genre]: the target audience is not teens but mature adults and young adults. In her book, Dawn also manages to bridge the gap between the secular and religious reasons for chastity as it calls us to rethink the meaning of sexuality. Staunch secularists will call it too religious. Conservative Christians will call it too secular, but what the text cannot be called is wrong. She speaks the truth, for she has “been there and done that”. [Read the full review.]
Book signing: Borders Books and Music, 8027 Leesburg Pike, Suite 100, Vienna, Virginia. 7:30 p.m. Call (703) 556-7766
Keep an eye on the Appearances section of thrillofthechaste.com to learn if I'm coming to your latitude and longitude.
And here's a repeat of my request for more gigs:
If you work or volunteer for a church, young-adult group, or bookstore, this post is for you: To promote my book, which comes out December 5, I'm planning to do bookstore signings and talks. Several are already lined up, but I'd like to do many more.
My book's target audience is women in their 20s and 30s, so young-adult gatherings and Theology on Tap-type events would be ideal. (I'm already set to speak at the New Haven, Conn., Theology on Tap in January.) Depending on how many appearances can be arranged in a particular region and whether the group sponsoring my appearance is willing to buy copies of my book (which may be purchased in bulk from my publisher at a discount), I would travel anywhere in the country. (After all, I'm only a first-time author once.)
I would also like very much to speak at charity fund-raisers, particularly for pregnancy resource centers. I have done one such benefit already, for Hudson, N.Y.'s Alight Center, and it went extremely well. If you would like to book me for an event, please e-mail dawn -at- dawneden.com (replacing -at- with an @).
"We are often like Job. We look on suffering as if it is the worse thing that can happen to us but fail to see that sometimes there is nothing else that will break down the stony walls we erect around our hearts, the adamant convictions that separate us from God. He made us to fit into and participate in the love that has always flowed between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But we are such terribly wounded people that we run from him as though he really is a hateful, cruel enemy. Yet we always run with hunger in our hearts, wanting him to see us, starving to know that he is watching. We will always be young children longing to call out, 'Watch me! Watch me!' as we pedal our tricycles around the yard for the twentieth time in half an hour. God knows the hunger in our hearts whether or not we declare it. He sees us, not from high up in heaven, not from a far corner, not even through the kitchen window as he finishes the washing up, but right here, right now – we always have God’s undivided attention."
The current issue of Catholic World Report features an article I wrote about unvowed chastity — the chastity of one who hopes for marriage and at the same time realizes that one's future, married or not, is in God's hands. I wrote it partly in response to those in the Catholic world who assert that chastity lacks spiritual significance or a sense of purpose unless it is sealed with a vow. Here is an excerpt:
When it comes to faith, God recognizes no mushy middle. The Bible is filled with exhortations to take a stand, perhaps most eloquently in Revelation 3, when Jesus tells the Laodicean church to be cold or hot — but not lukewarm.
On the other hand, the Bible makes clear that our life on Earth, on the other hand is an ongoing study in reconciliation. “I have been a stranger in a strange land,” said Moses, and God’s people have always been strangers among the worldly. The Lord wants us to rely solely upon Him for direction, as David writes in the 25th Psalm: “Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net.”
In other words, as I see it, we are supposed to be absolutely certain of where we stand — but not so sure about where we’re going. ...
A friend of mine, while training me to volunteer at a charity that helped homebound senior citizens, warned me not to assume that a healthy-looking client was able to take good care of himself. “Not all disabilities are visible,” she said.
In the same way, not all abilities are visible. It is impossible to tell from observing someone’s life what spiritual graces that person has received. "The world admires only spectacular sacrifice," wrote St. Josemaria Escriva, "because it does not realize the value of sacrifice that is hidden and silent."
“His Holiness was very affable and very cooperative. Perhaps a little awkward at times, without the showmanship, if one may use the term, of John Paul II. But always very helpful and cooperative.”
So says photographer Giancarlo Giuliani, on photographing Pope Benedict XVI for a 2007 calendar that will benefit a Rwandan mission aiding children, leading me to wonder, with friends like these? I mean, shouldn't there be a statute of limitations on unfavorable comparisons between John Paul the Great's "showmanship" and Benedict's "awkwardness"?
Admittedly, the Pope doesn't look terribly relaxed on the calendar's cover, as he gazes at a fountain. Somehow, I imagine the pontiff's trying to look nonchalant as the David Bailey-like lensman kneels on the opposite side of the fountain saying, "Yeah, Papa! That's it! Give it to me ... give it to me!"
Todd Starnes imagines something similar, only he somehow segues into a tale of the time Playboy magazine persuaded a student at Baylor, a Southern Baptist university, to pose for its pages.
"Now," Starnes writes, "for those who are not familiar with the Southern Baptist way, let me offer a primer. There are a few things Baptists don't do — getting nekkid is one of them. It ranks right up there with dating Methodists."
The Church of England has endorsed the killing of disabled newborns. Midwest Conservative Journal's Christopher Johnson parses the church's statement, which says that parents are permitted to have their babies killed if they do so with "manifest reluctance" after considering the alternatives as well as their own financial situation. Yes, money is a necessary factor, the church states, in deciding who shall live and who shall die. The church's "principle of humility ... asks that parents restrain themselves from demanding the impossible from the medical profession and indeed from themselves and their own capacity to cope."
"There is no place for apathy in a world which sees 30,000 children die each day because of poverty-related conditions. The bible [sic] teaches that whatever we do to the poorest we do also to Jesus. We believe God judges nations by what they do to the poorest. This means all of us in the prosperous world, governments, churches, the media and populations stand under judgement, to the degree that we fail to respond to such a situation with costly compassion and generosity, so that we may help in God’s name and by God’s grace to secure justice for the poor."
So, in the eyes of the Church of England, one's own monetary situation should be no barrier to helping children in other countries — only when deciding whether one's own child should live or die. "Costly compassion" can cost only so much.
Not surprisingly, the church's statement on euthanasia, unlike its G-8 statement, makes no reference to standing "under judgment." If the parents who kill their disabled newborn do come under judgment for it, the church does not think they need to be aware of that possibility during this life.
If you work or volunteer for a church, young-adult group, or bookstore, this post is for you: To promote my book, which comes out December 5, I'm planning to do bookstore signings and talks. Several are already lined up, but I'd like to do many more.
My book's target audience is women in their 20s and 30s, so young-adult gatherings and Theology on Tap-type events would be ideal. (I'm already set to speak at the New Haven, Conn., Theology on Tap in January.) Depending on how many appearances can be arranged in a particular region and whether the group sponsoring my appearance is willing to buy copies of my book (which may be purchased in bulk from my publisher at a discount), I would travel anywhere in the country. (After all, I'm only a first-time author once.)
I would also like very much to speak at charity fund-raisers, particularly for pregnancy resource centers. I have done one such benefit already, for Hudson, N.Y.'s Alight Center, and it went extremely well. If you would like to book me for an event, please e-mail dawn -at- dawneden.com (replacing -at- with an @).
The interviews that Holy Whapping's Matt Alderman and I did with National Public Radio's religion correspondent finally aired yesterday, in a report titled "Can America's Catholics Adapt to Tridentine Mass?" The reporter, Rachel Martin, inaccurately said it was my first Tridentine Mass — I'd told her I went to one before I became a Catholic — but other than that, I think she did a good job, considering that she was approaching it as a general religion reporter with little or no background on the Tridentine Mass and related issues.
Matt clearly deserves credit for giving Martin significant enlightenment. I was tremendously impressed (though, knowing him, not in the least surprised) at how his off-the-cuff comments were so articulate and insightful; et cum spiritu tu-awesome.
Via YouTube, a stunning find for this Peter Cook megafan: a newsreel from the filming of the Cook/Moore classic "Bedazzled" (early in the filming, I think). It shows a side of Cook's characterization that I never realized; apparently, he initially envisioned the Devil as a variation on his gloriously stultifying E.L. Wisty character.
In a strange and deep way, I think Cook's performance here — when he manages to stay in character — is closer to the actual Devil than any other portrayal of Lucifer that I've seen. Many of his answers are theologically astute, to the point of being Augustinian. It's said that he really did get into the character, even portraying the Devil in a theological debate at a London church.
I don't know about you, but I died when Cook likened his serpent outfit to something by Courrèges.
If you've never seen the film, here's a highlight:
During the days leading to Thanksgiving, Kristine of Child of Divorce—Child of God is making a list of 1,000 things for which she's thankful. She's up to 264 so far (
