Good Instruction on Mass Participation

another one from 10 reasons

Notice there is nothing about holding hands or orans position, just prayerful dignity, no Happy Clappy crap.

The Egyptian

Real liturgical movement

The other day I posted about the University of Dayton's "euphemization" of liturgical dance by renaming it movement. Yet as the latest issue of the Adoremus Bulletin shows us, the Mass already contains plenty of required and recommended movements, many of which go unobserved. We might spend time learning them instead of going off in dubious directions. Here's a list of these gestures and postures for just the entrance rites:

Make the sign of the cross with holy water (a sign of baptism) upon entering the church.

Genuflect toward the tabernacle containing the Blessed Sacrament and the Altar of Sacrifice before entering the pew. (If there is no tabernacle in the sanctuary, or it is not visible, bow deeply, from the waist, toward the altar before entering the pew.)

Kneel upon entering the pew for private prayer before Mass begins.

Stand for the entrance procession.

Bow when the crucifix, a visible symbol of Christ’s sacrifice, passes you in the procession. (If there is a bishop, bow when he passes, as a sign of recognition that he represents the authority of the Church and of Christ as shepherd of the flock.)

Remain standing for the entrance rites. Make the sign of the cross with the priest at the beginning of Mass.

Strike your breast at the “mea culpa(s)” (“through my fault”) in the Confiteor.

Bow and make the sign of the cross when the priest says “May Almighty God have mercy…”

Bow your head when you say “Lord, have mercy” during the Kyrie.

If there is a Rite of Sprinkling (Asperges), make the sign of the cross when the priest sprinkles water from the aspergillum in your direction.

Throughout the Mass, bow your head at every mention of the name of Jesus and every time the Doxology [“Glory be”] is spoken or sung. Also when asking the Lord to receive our prayer.

Gloria: bow your head at the name of Jesus. (“Lord Jesus Christ, only begotten Son…”, “You alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ…” )

Gestural disunity

I have tried to explain this to people here, they just say so what. People ct as if you are anitsocial if you don't grab their hand, sorry but I don't like it

The Egyptian

Thanks to a new found blog 10 Reasons

Gestural disunity

Here is a picture of worshipers adopting a hands-clasping version of the Orans position, presumably during Mass, on the home page* for the Worship office of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati:

And here is a backgrounder from renowned canon lawyer Ed Peters on the dubiousness of that very practice:

While the orans position as such has a rich tradition in Jewish and even ancient Christian prayer life, there is no precedent for Catholic laity assuming the orans position in Western liturgy for at least a millennium and a half; that point alone cautions against its introduction without careful thought. Moreover — and notwithstanding the fact that few liturgical gestures are univocal per se — lay use of the orans gesture in Mass today, besides injecting gestural disunity in liturgy, could further blur the differences between lay liturgical roles and those of priests just at a time when distinctions between the baptismal priesthood and the ordained priesthood are struggling for a healthy articulation.

Love the Attitude

Maybe we should approch being Catholic this way ;>)

The Egyptian

well laugh dammit, its funny

Its Not Nice To Mess With Mother Nature

In the Old Testament the first born of man or animal was offered to the Lord , man to be in service to the Lord, animals in sacrifice, makes on wonder, are we ticking off someone whom we shouldn't. Some claim nature, but what is nature and who ordered it, we are playing with fire and getting burned. See my two previous posts

The Egyptian

http://germanegyptian.blogspot.com/2010/02/natural-woman-my-ass-what-crock.html
http://germanegyptian.blogspot.com/2010/02/figures.html


Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2007

Study Links Abortion and Preemies

By Laura Blue

Abortions increase the risk of low birth weight in future pregnancies by a factor of three, and of premature birth by a factor of two, according to the largest U.S. study of its kind. The study is hardly perfect; the data is more than 40 years old and doesn't distinguish between medical abortions and "spontaneous abortions," better known as miscarriages. Yet the report, published today in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (JECH), shows one of the strongest links yet between miscarriage or abortion on premature birth and low birth weight — major risk factors for infant death or sickness.

What makes report significant is the size and detail of data. Some previous, smaller studies on abortion and future birth weight have suffered because researchers were unable to untangle the effects of abortion from, say, the effects of being poor (which also happens to increase a woman's odds of having an abortion). But the researchers behind the JECH study, which evaluated just over 45,000 single-child live births from 1959 to 1966, were able to adjust for an impressive array of confounding variables, including race, age, weight, height, marital status, occupation, the number of prenatal visits, the number of previous children, smoking and drinking habits, drug habits, infant gender and both parents' education levels.

That kind of rigor makes the new findings particularly important. The study not only found a link between abortion or miscarriage and low birth weight, but it also found that the risk appears to increase with every subsequent miscarriage or abortion. The accruing risk, says co-author Tilahun Adera at Virginia Commonwealth University, suggests that termination of pregnancy is a true cause of low birth weight and preterm birth rather than a variable associated with such conditions. "It's not just an association," he says. "The risk of premature birth increases with the increasing number of abortions."

Women who had had one, two or three prior abortions or miscarriages were three, five and nine times more likely, respectively, to have a low-birth-weight child, the data showed. Though it's still not clear why that's so, doctors theorize that the cervix may be weakened by miscarriage or abortion, increasing the risk of preterm birth later on. Or, it could be that uterine adhesions or infections from the terminated pregnancy slow the growth of the fetus in subsequent pregnancies.

Recent major studies from Australia and Canada have also concluded that miscarriages and induced abortions raise the odds of premature birth and low birth weight — but only modestly. (Those studies were able to distinguish women who had miscarried from women who had intentionally ended their pregnancies.) Many other studies have found no clear link at all. Perhaps that's because different study populations, taken from all over the world, involve different risk factors for premature birth; or it may be simply that the sample sizes in some studies were too small to pick up relatively small differences between women who had had abortions and those who had not.

The big question, however, is how well data from the 1960s really represents American women today. Back in the '60s, induced abortions were illegal in the U.S. It's possible that some women in the study had abortions but denied it — even to their doctors — or claimed to have miscarried. That makes the data harder to interpret. Illegal abortion techniques of the day, moreover, were no doubt cruder than abortion procedures today, and they may have caused more permanent damage to the reproductive system.

Indeed, the public-health implications of the JECH study may be more suitable for developing countries, says Adera — places where abortion is still illegal, and where prenatal care may be similar to what was offered in the U.S. half a century ago. Still, he says, all over the world, "Women need to be informed about these risks."

ash blot test

No comment, it says it all

The Egyptian

Sunday funny 2-21-10

This one deserves to stand alone, by Michael Ramirez at Townhall.com (click to enlarge)...

now for the light side, enjoy

The Egyptian

Defend marriage

The Other McCain is a protestant with a passel of kids and a saintly wife for putting up with him. But seriously why do we not hear this kind of thing from pulpit in the Catholic Church these days? Does it really take an evangelical to say it, Has the church become so secular that it no longer wants to tell the truth. Why is the church short of priests and sisters today? We are losing the high ground on birth control and marriage that's why, too much of Bernadine's seamless garment happy clappy crap, and CINOs such as the Kennedys and Pisslousy, look at all the Cinos in Washington, it's a damn disgrace

The Egyptian

‘Forbidding to Marry’

If you put something out with the trash . . . it’s not really yours anymore; you’ve relinquished your claim to it. And that’s exactly what we’ve done with marriage. We might as well let gays have it. We’re not using it. . . .

And for my fellow Christian conservatives: we haven’t got a moral leg to stand on. Our divorce rate is identical to the national average.

Well, to repeat the punchline of an old joke, “What do you mean, ‘we,’ Kemosabe?” As of next Monday, I will have been married to the same woman for 20 years. My lovely and long-suffering wife deserves almost all the credit for that achievement, of course, but I have at least been present for the occasion.

Most of what you have written about the marriage crisis is, of course, right on target, especially when you say that Christian churches “fail to create a culture of marriage in our youth and twenty-somethings.” But, as with your statistical generalization about the failure of “we,” I fear that you are missing the trees for the forest on this issue. What has happened, it seems to me, is that everybody’s sitting around moaning about “society” and “the culture,” rather than seeking to intervene directly and personally to make a difference in the lives of those closest to them.

For me, being pro-marriage, pro-family and pro-life is more than a political position. My wife and I have six kids ranging from age 5 to 19, and you can imagine how challenging this has been on a journalist’s pay. (Never mind a blogger’s pay.) But as my late father advised me long ago, “Son, if you wait to have kids until you can afford to have kids, you’ll never have kids.”

‘TWO AND TIE ‘EM’
Christians believe that marriage is an institution ordained by God, and every marriage is thus blessed. However, in ordaining marriage, God commanded man to “be fruitful and multiply.” This commandment has never been repealed or amended, no matter what any Malthusian population-control fanatic tries to tell you. One trend that has undermined marriage has been the rise of the Contraceptive Culture, which celebrates sterility as the norm and views fertility as a pathology requiring medical prevention.

How many Christians have embraced this false — dare I say, evil — worldview? How many young Christian married couples use contraception because “we can’t afford children now”? And how many married Christian couples have unwittingly subscribed to the Zero Population Growth ideal of exactly two children per couple? Did you know that surgical sterilization (tubal ligation) is the No. 1 form of birth control for American women? It’s the “two and tie ‘em” mentality: Have exactly two children, then get yourself surgically sterilized.

My wife and I encountered this mentality with our second pregnancy (our twin sons, who are now 16). During a prenatal examination, the obstetrician told my wife, “If you want me to perform a tubal at the time of delivery, it will be cheaper than if you want me to do it later, because the insurance will only have to pay for one hospitalization.” My wife came home in tears: “Am I an unfit mother? Why would he even suggest such a thing?” But millions of women across America not only accept such suggestions, they actively seek sterilization, viewing it as a liberation from the menace of pregnancy.

In this, many “Christian conservatives” seem entirely comfortable with being “conformed to this world,” slavishly following the secular trend. What one confronts is an attitude I call “middle classism”: The belief that the object of life is to accrue the symbols of middle-class status (college education, office job, new cars, home in the suburbs, vacation travel) and to ensure that one’s children accumulate the same symbols.

A SHOCKING CHOICE
Life without these symbols is deemed unworthy — “underprivileged” — and many parents who consider themselves Christian conservatives strongly caution their children against early marriage and early parenthood, since these are perceived as obstacles to obtaining middle-classness. If a 19-year-old returns from her freshman year at college to announce that she is a lesbian, her Christian conservative parents may not approve, but they will still love and cherish their child. Let the same 19-year-old announce that she’s marrying her boyfriend and dropping out of school to start a family, and this would drive her Christian conservative parents to the verge of suicidal grief: “You’re ruining your life!”

What is the result of this attitude? I wrote about it a decade ago:

Fact: In 1960, the median age at first marriage for U.S. women was 20. Today, it´s 25. For men, the median age at first marriage has gone from 22 in 1960 to 27 today. Yet researchers report that the average young American today first has sexual intercourse at age 17 or 18.
Judging from these statistics, then, most young people in this country will be “sexually active” . . . for eight to 10 years before marrying. If that is true, what future can there be for the politics of “family values”? . . .
If young Americans are less likely to marry than Americans of a generation ago, they are also less likely to become parents.
Overall, U.S. fertility rates have declined by 43.6 percent since 1960 and like the marriage trends this decline is most pronounced among the young. The birth rate for women aged 20-24 decreased 56.5 percent between 1960 and 2000, according to the Census Bureau. For all the outcry over America´s “teen pregnancy crisis,” the teen birth rate is now 34.7 percent lower than it was in the final year of the Eisenhower administration.

This trend away from marriage and parenthood has not been opposed or condemned by Christian leaders, who are afraid to offend their congregations. Many evangelical Christians like to talk about “stepping out on faith,” even while they live an existence carefully calculated toward attainment of upwardly-mobile middle-classness. Thus, at noon on Sunday, they get into one of their 2.4 cars and drive home from their suburban mega-church to their cul-de-sac development, to their 4BR/5BA house with 1.7 children. And then they wonder why they don’t feel particularly “spiritual.”

Too many people who consider themselves Christian conservatives are disobedient to God’s commandments, yet idolatrously reverent toward the conventions of a middle-class lifestyle. Their true religion is the Theology of Niceness: Get a nice job so you can live in a nice neighborhood with nice schools for your nice children who will wear nice clothes when you drive them in your nice car to play with their nice friends. Everything all neat and tidy, you see? Hard for the Duggars and their 18 children to live nice like that. Yet they work hard and have faith in God, and somehow they don’t all starve to death.

Thou shalt go to college is the first commandment of middle-classness, and the lifestyle idolators don’t consider how this inflexible attitude contributes to the flourishing of adolescent fornication. It’s very good to tell young teens that they should save sex for marriage, but . . . well, how soon can they get married?

“Oh, you’ll have to go to college, start a career and become financially stable first.” And the 13- or 14-year-old does the math and thinks, “Twenty-five? 26? 27? You’re freaking kidding me! That’s like a zillion years in the future! I’ll be practically 30 by that time!” The prospect of an (honestly) white wedding being dangled off in the distant future has a profoundly demoralizing effect on kids. As a result, every church youth leader can tell you stories about the 17-year-old girl who got pregnant after her boyfriend convinced her that “it’s not wrong if we really love each other.” (It’s the oldest line in the book, girls.)

THE DEATH OF ROMANCE
This is why pop songs no longer feature promises of “endless love” and “always and forever.” In 1971, the protagonist of the Temptations’ hit “Just My Imagination” saw a beautiful girl walk past and dreamed:

Soon we’ll be married
And raise a family.
In a cozy little home out in the country
With two children, maybe three.

If such visions of wedded bliss occupy no part of the youthful imagination today, why not? Perhaps because children are indoctrinated to believe that marriage is strictly for grown-ups — heaven forbid an 18-year-old boy should get a job, marry his high-school sweetheart, and start their life together in a tiny little basement apartment. What about college? What about your career? What about the upwardly-mobile ambitions of middle-classness?

If this status idolatry isn’t anti-marriage, what is it? I’m reminded of the fourth chapter of Timothy:

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry . . .

Myself, I try to actively encourage marriage for young people. I’m a relentless matchmaker, and as soon as I see young folks pairing up as boyfriend and girlfriend, I start asking, “When’s the wedding?” (And once they’re married, “When’s the baby due?”) Instead of sitting around waiting for somebody’s legislative agenda, I’m “pro-family” in the most direct, personal way possible.

If young Christian conservatives want to be “pro-family,” then, they need to be getting married and having babies. And what a youth rebellion that would be, huh? “No, mother, I’ve decided against law school. As a matter of fact, Jennifer and I went to the courthouse and got married last Saturday and . . .” Strange to say that the most shocking thing a young person can do in 2009 is to get married. They can change the world one “I do” at a time.

UPDATE: Is this a harmonic convergence or what? While I was writing this, it appears that Laura was updating her post to link my American Spectator column, “Marriage: A Hill to Die On.”

UPDATE II:In the comments at my blog, father-of-five Larry says:

I cannot count the number of times we have been unintentionally insulted by well meaning, self-identified Christians, asking if we know what causes that (pregnancy) . . .

To which I always answer, “Yes, and we’re very good at it.” That shuts ‘em up quick.

In the comments here, meanwhile, Feel of Shadows calls our attention to an article in First Things outlining the role of the decline of the family in the economic crisis:

America’s population has risen from 200 million to 300 million since 1970, while the total number of two-parent families with children is the same today as it was when Richard Nixon took office, at 25 million. In 1973, the United States had 36 million housing units with three or more bedrooms, not many more than the number of two-parent families with children—which means that the supply of family homes was roughly in line with the number of families. By 2005, the number of housing units with three or more bedrooms had doubled to 72 million, though America had the same number of two-parent families with children.
The number of two-parent families with children, the kind of household that requires and can afford a large home, has remained essentially stagnant since 1963, according to the Census Bureau. Between 1963 and 2005, to be sure, the total number of what the Census Bureau categorizes as families grew from 47 million to 77 million. But most of the increase is due to families without children, including what are sometimes rather strangely called “one-person families.”
In place of traditional two-parent families with children, America has seen enormous growth in one-parent families and childless families. The number of one-parent families with children has tripled. Dependent children formed half the U.S. population in 1960, and they add up to only 30 percent today. The dependent elderly doubled as a proportion of the population, from 15 percent in 1960 to 30 percent today.

BTW, we should not neglect to mention that, in myriad ways, government policies have incentivized the decline of the traditional family. Beginning in the 1960s, federal money paid for “family planning” services, numerous welfare programs that fostered unwed motherhood, and policies that tended to destroy the kinds of neighborhoods where young families once got their start.

A Former Pro-Choice Atheist Reflects on Sex, Abortion and Anger

Please read this and pass it on, originally posted on the Other McCain.
Written by – Jennifer Fulwiler Every woman and girl should read this and them their men and boys too
The Egyptian

Quote

“In every society, there are two critical lists: acceptable conditions for having a baby, and acceptable conditions for having sex. . . . It was only with the widespread acceptance of contraception in the middle of the 20th century, creating an upheaval in the public psyche in which sex and babies no longer went hand-in-hand, that the two lists began to diverge.”
Unquote

read the whole story

natural woman my ass, what a crock

from Creative Minority report

in the farm world we refer to this as barren.

The Egyptian

I was over a friend's house picking up a buddy of mine this past weekend. He wasn't ready so I ended up hanging out for a few minutes with his wife and her friend. I'd met the other woman before but don't know her all that well. She was talking a mile a minute about how "natural" she lives and how great she feels. Of course, she was telling us that we should be living the same way. She lectured me about different herbs and how she's detoxing her body.

She's been "living naturally" since New Year's Day. (Her words)

She said she feels so much better ("fantabulous!!!" was her word) and she's been doing a lot of reading about all the "unnatural" chemicals people put in their bodies and how harmful it all is.

My buddy came into the room and rolled his eyes but I didn't know her well enough to joke about it since she seemed to take it all very seriously so I listened to her. Actually, I kind of pretended to listen by just nodding my head and occasionally grunting.

In the conversation my buddy joked about me "detoxing" my five children.

"What?!" gasped the woman. "Really? You really have five kids?"

One of the funny things about writing a Catholic blog is you sometimes forget that having five kids is a lot. But around the Catholic blogosphere I read about so many people who have that many children and many more that I forget how countercultural it is to have more than two children.

Then she asked me if I was crazy?

I responded I was. (I mean, how else do you respond to that?)

"My gosh," she said, slowing herself down for a moment. "I couldn't even imagine. One's enough for me. I'm not having anymore. My husband wants more but thank God for the Pill."

Ms. Natural Living is on the Pill?

I couldn't hold me tongue so I just threw it out there. "How does all this natural living coincide with all the chemicals you're putting in your body from the Pill?"

And then she said that she needs to be on the Pill because it allows her to live naturally. If she had more children then she wouldn't have the time to live the way she wanted to live, she said.

I held my tongue after that. Remember, I was the crazy one.

Erin Manning wrote:

What a horrific lie it is, to convince millions upon millions of healthy woman that their bodies' natural fertility is a terrible disease for which a decades-long prescription to a drug engineered to fight against it is not only necessary, but imperative!

It is rather an oddity that with all this focus on natural foods that many women still don't consider birth control in the same manner.

A Misunderstood Pope

The lies that persist about this good man are terrible. Read to the end maybe its about the Rabbis conversion ;>)

The Egyptian

Pope Pius XII’s Canonization: Another Hurdle to Jump

One of the ironies of living in today’s Catholic world is that while some people are falling all over themselves to get John Paul II canonized, there are those others who still believe the Black Legend that Pope Pius XII, also up for canonization, did not do enough for European Jews during the Holocaust.

Reuters has an article up about a letter that was recently sent to His Holiness by a group of Catholic scholars from the United States and elsewhere. In their letter, the group “implores” His Holiness to stop the Process of Canonization because it would damage relations between Catholics and Jews.

As many of you will know, this kind of appeal is nothing new. Smear campaigns against the memory of Pope Pius XII have been around for years. Yet few people know that he tried as hard as he could to save as many Jews as possible. Take the following story as an example about the Allied bombardment of Rome:

There were many Jews. On September 28, the Chief Rabbi of Rome sought the aid of the Holy Father. THe Nazis and neo-Fascists had demanded the tremendous ransom of 1,00,000 lire and one hundred pounds of gold from the Jewish residents with threat of looting their homes and enslaving them. The Jews of Rome raised the lire, but they simply did not have that much of the precious metal. Could the Pope help them?

Pius did not hesitate. Within twenty-four hours, the ransom was paid. Though he never told anyone how the gold was obtained, it is known that he ordered holy vessels melted down to provide the funds for this most Christ-like succor of those of an alien faith.

But the gold sacrifice bought not safety, but only a respite for the Jews. Soon the methodical pogrom began again. Jewish houses and stores were smashed and looted by the neo-Fascists; Jewish families were broken up, their men-folk shipped into slavery in northern Italy and Germany; the women and children left without sustenance or shelter. Hundreds sought protection in the Vatican. Among them was Chief Rabbi Zolli himself.

Two years later, after the invader had gone and ITaly was once more free, the Chief Rabbi of Rome embraced the Catholic faith. (Hatch and Walshe. Crown of Glory: The Life of Pope Pius XII. Hawthorn, 1958.)

In reading this account of Pope Pius XII’s efforts on behalf of the Jews, we should come to acknowledge that the myth of Hitler’s pope is just that. A myth.

As for Pope Pius XII himself, he was one of the greatest shepherds our Church has known in recent decades. He sacrificed himself so that the flock of Christ would be preserved throughout the world by fighting a war on two fronts against Communism and Fascism. Such a man deserves our deepest admiration and thanks.

figures

had this lying around for a while, just cleaning up and found it in the files. It kind of makes sense doesn't it

Thje Egyptian

Federal Study Confirms Contraception-Breast Cancer Link

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Posted by Tim Drake

Ten years ago, Dr. Chris Kahlenborn, authored the book Breast Cancer: Its Link to Abortion and the Birth Control Pill, which established the connection between the birth control pill and breast cancer.

Now, a federal study confirms that data.

The study shows a strong connection between the use of oral contraceptives and a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer with a high mortality rate, known as “triple-negative” breast cancer (TNBC). The study also found that the connection was highest among women who began using oral contraceptives while they were teenagers.

The 2009 Jessica Dolle study of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center appeared in the April 2009 issue of the cancer epidemiology journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

The research showed that women who start using oral contraceptives before the age of 18 multiply their risk of TNBC by 3.7 times. Recent users of oral contraceptives within the last one to five years multiply their risk by 4.2 times.

Furthermore, the study is noteworthy because it contained an admission of the link between abortion and breast cancer by National Cancer Institute (NCI) researcher Louise Brinton, who had previously influenced the agency to deny an abortion-breast cancer link.

The study showed a 40% risk increase for women who have had abortions, and one of the study’s tables listed abortion as a “known and suspected risk factor.”

Dr. Joel Brind, professor of biology and endocrinology and deputy chair for biology at Baruch College, City University of New York, described both findings a “bombshell.” Brind provided an analysis of the study.

Although the data’s been available for nine months, observers wonder why the mainstream media and cancer groups have been silent.

“Although the study was published nine months ago, the NCI, the American Cancer Society, Susan G. Komen for the Cure and other cancer-fundraising businesses have made no efforts to reduce breast-cancer rates by issuing nationwide warnings to women,” said Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer. “Obviously, more women will die of breast cancer if the NCI fails in its duty to warn about the risks of oral contraceptives and abortion and if government funds are used to pay for both as a part of any health-care bill.”