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.
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 (scroll down her blog to see), and the list is just delightful. A random sample:
214. People who put perfectly good wooden desk chairs out for the trash 215. Clean sheets 216. Being able to paint my office pink 217. Knowing "this too shall pass" 218. The phone not ringing once (elections are over)
I started to make a list of my own, but immediately ran into trouble, because I don't want to be a copycat, and Kristine seems to have already thought of the good ones (like electricity and "being in my right mind" — though she links "right mind" to a page about being left-handed, which I'm not).
So, here's 30 not-too-derivative entries (save for the big ones uptop), with perhaps a few more to come, depending upon popular demand. Also, Kristine asks her readers to comment with lists of things for which they're thankful; I echo that request.
Starting with some of the big ones, and drifting into no particular order:
1. My faith 2. God's having healed me of depression 3. Being Catholic 4. My family 5. My friends 6. My home 7. Living in a beautiful town 8. Living three blocks from the train to New York City 9. The fact that the clothes I bought over the past few years still fit 10. Sisters of Life 11. Sushi 12. Free Mexican generic pseudophedrine in the medicine cabinet at work 13. The West 33rd St. Jesus statue 14. Touchstone 15. Babies that stare at me in quiet fascination 16. My stepmother's watercolors 17. Richard Rodgers' "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" 18. The Bible 19. Getting highlights 20. People who make me laugh 21. Cornflower-blue glass 22. People with fuzzy hair who let me feel their head (just once) 23. Having big lips 24. Surprisingly sunny and mild November days 25. Cats in other people's homes 26. Discovering that the ladies'-room stall has a hook for my purse 27. G.K. Chesterton 28. Used bookstores 29. Shop employees I barely know who yet seem genuinely happy to see me 30. Discovering that the place where I'm staying has an old-fashioned, water-wasting shower head
A free online test apparently developed by Harvard Medical School researchers tests one's ear for music. I got 80.6%, which the scoring guide says is excellent, but I feel like I could have done better if I'd concentrated harder.
Reader Jeffery W. Moore, a former Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism, sends the following e-mail he wrote to Father Fred Bailey, whom Moore says is the priest who was videotaped celebrating Mass in a Barney costume on Halloween. I am publishing the priest's e-mail address at Jeffery's suggestion (substitute "@" for "-at-"; I don't want spambots to pick up his address). I would add that, if you follow Jeffery's lead and write to Father Bailey, you should copy the staff in the Orange County archdiocese's bishop's office. Bishop Tod Brown's e-mail address is not online, but his assistants' ones are: jbobier -at- rcbo.org and dmcgrath -at- rcbo.org.
[Addendum: As a commenter notes, Jeffery's explanation of the origin of All Saint's Day repeats what is thought to be a myth. Also, like another commenter, I'm not in agreement with Jeffery with regard to the tone he used. However, I give him a great deal of credit for writing to the priest about the offensiveness of the Halloween Mass, and believe that others who feel likewise should do likewise rather than confine their opinions to the blogosphere.]
Jeffery writes:
Subject: Halloween Mass To: Fredkbailey -at- corpuschristialisoviejo.org
Rev. Bailey,
In your parish bulletin dated October 21-22 you called your parishioners to come "together in worship, fun and frolic" on the following Sunday by dressing up in their Halloween costumes. You also stated, " While some church communities scare their members with silly talk of Halloween being devil worship and other such nonsense, we Catholic-Christians understand that All Hallows Eve is the EVE of All Saint's Day, an autumn celebration that honors our spiritual heritage."
While this statement is true to a certain extent, if you had done any research on the subject you would known that this celebration was originally a pagan holiday that the Church tried to 'baptize' so to speak by switching the emphasis from pagan religious traditions, which emphasized the possibility of spirits coming into contact with the physical world on that night, to the Saints in heaven. In fact prior to Popes Gregory III and Gregory IV All Saints' Day had been on May 13. But as I have already stated, they moved it to Nov 1 to try to combat pagan rituals. (One such ritual was the carving of scary faces on pumpkins to try to keep the evil spirits away which you apparently placed around your altar on that Sunday.) Now we all know that what the Popes attempted did not succeed and the people celebrated their past pagan rituals along with the Feast of All Saints'. What I am trying to show you is that most of what is done on Halloween has NO Christian background and therefore, your use of costumes on the Sunday before All Hallows Eve was completely absurd and a degradation of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. You should be ashamed of yourself.
You are supposed to be leading your congregation in the Faith and instead you are destroying any sense of holiness they may have concerning Christ in the Eucharist. You made the Mass into a joke with your idea of "fun and frolic". In fact these two words should not even enter into your speech when talking about the Mass. Christ did not institue the Sacrament of His Body and Blood so that we could come together to have fun and frolic together; He gave us the Eucharist so that we could proclaim His Death and Resurrection until He comes again and so that we as His believers could share in His Sacrifice that has been offered once and for all. I ask you for the sake of those who are under your care either treat the Lord present in the Eucharist with the respect and reverence He so rightly deserves or else leave the priesthood.
I can't tell you what's in the following clip, because I couldn't bear to watch more than the first part of it, so here's the description from the YouTube user Concerned Catholic:
"The following clips were captured at Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Aliso Viejo, California. The parish bulletin encouraged parishioners to wear Halloween costumes to Mass. The segment includes Eucharistic Ministers dressed as a huntsman and a devil, as well as an organist dressed as a devil. The 6 min clip ends with Fr. Fred Bailey leaving before the end of Mass, returning shortly thereafter in his 'Barney' costume."
I note that the music sung in the first part of the clip is some Haugen/Hass-type modern song, which doesn't surprise me in the least. I think that if the parishioners were singing, say, "The Church's One Foundation," they might have been less disposed to step into the Communion line where the sacrament was distributed by Hellvira.
I discovered this clip at Father Tim Finigan's Hermeneutic of Continuity, where the English pastor writes, "Now tell me how terrible and divisive it would be if the Holy Father were to issue a Motu Proprio giving greater freedom for the Classical Roman Rite."
The Conservative Book Service — formerly the National Review Book Service — not only is featuring my book on the front page of its site, but it's offering a special discount if one buys my book along with Mark Steyn's latest. What an honor just to be mentioned in the same virtual breath as Steyn.
UPDATE: Turns out they rotate the twofer discounts, pairing my book with one of a variety of bestsellers. It's apparently luck of the draw as to which book is paired with mine at a given time.
After a few weeks, the answer to Amazon's question suddenly changed to the soundtrack of the Leonard Cohen documentary I'm Your Man. Currently, the page claims that 86% of customers go on to buy my book, while the other 14% all go on to buy the Leonard Cohen album. I am certain that this is a joke by some wag at Amazon, who was amused at the idea that women who don't buy The Thrill of the Chaste would buy a guy who says, "I'm your man."
The Times of London reports* that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology is reacting to the number of disabled children's surviving because of medical advances — by proposing that doctors be allowed the power of "deliberate interventions to kill infants."
The Royal College did not specify which disabilities would merit "deliberate interventions," but if the Netherlands' Groningen Protocol is anything to go by, the range of possible euthanasia-worthy ailments is largely subjective — and where it is specific, it is all the more disturbing.
In one of its few citations of a particular ailment for which euthanasia should be permitted, the Groningen Protocol states that killing a newborn may be considered more humane than permitting it to live with Trisomy 13. I doubt that any parent of a Trisomy 13 baby would say that raising such a child is easy, nor do such children grow up to be independent. But I think it would take a particular kind of heartlessness to look at any one of the children's photos in the Living With Trisomy 13 Web site's album and state that the child's life should have been snuffed out.
According to the Times article:
The college is arguing that “active euthanasia” should be considered for the overall good of families, to spare parents the emotional burden and financial hardship of bringing up the sickest babies.
“A very disabled child can mean a disabled family,” it says. “If life-shortening and deliberate interventions to kill infants were available, they might have an impact on obstetric decision-making, even preventing some late abortions, as some parents would be more confident about continuing a pregnancy and taking a risk on outcome.”
Those familiar with Margaret Sanger's rhetoric will recognize it practically word-for-word in the Royal College's warning that "a very disabled child can mean a disabled family" — though they take her topsy-turvy ethics even further with their utterly surreal claim that killing newborns would have the positive effect of preventing late abortions. (Apparently, with the murder of the baby a foregone conclusion, one may then concentrate on killing it by the means which is least intrusive upon the mother.)
We must set motherhood free. We must give the foreign and submerged mother knowledge that will enable her to prevent bringing to birth children she does not want. We know that in each of these submerged and semi-submerged elements of the population there are rich factors of racial culture. Motherhood is the channel through which these cultures flow. Motherhood, when free to choose the father, free to choose the time and the number of children who shall result from the union, automatically works in wondrous ways. It refuses to bring forth weaklings; refuses to bring forth slaves; refuses to bear children who must live under the conditions described. It withholds the unfit, brings forth the fit; brings few children into homes where there is not sufficient to provide for them. Instinctively it avoids all those things which multiply racial handicaps. Under such circumstances we can hope that the “melting pot” will refine. We shall see that it will save the precious metals of racial culture, fused into an amalgam of physical perfection, mental strength and spiritual progress. Such an American race, containing the best of all racial elements, could give to the world a vision and a leadership beyond our present imagination.
Returning to the Times article, there is a striking comment by a leading British bioethicist:
The college’s submission was also welcomed by John Harris, a member of the government’s Human Genetics Commission and professor of bioethics at Manchester University. “We can terminate for serious foetal abnormality up to term but cannot kill a newborn. What do people think has happened in the passage down the birth canal to make it okay to kill the foetus at one end of the birth canal but not at the other?” he said.
Why, indeed? After all, here in the States, Roe vs. Wade permits abortion up to the point of birth.
Two weeks ago, my dear friend Chuck's younger brother died suddenly. Patrick Raymond Connelly was only 39. The death notice that his family placed in the Newark Star-Ledger depicts a brilliant man who packed a tremendous amount of achievement into his short life, doing work that bettered — perhaps even saved — countless lives:
He received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Northeastern University, Boston, a masters degree in experimental teratology/molecular biology from Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, and a masters degree and doctorate in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Rochester, where his Ph.D. Thesis involved the use of MRI for the purposes of early prevention of brain tumors. Dr. Connelly was a biomedical engineer at Virtualscopics, a division of Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in Rochester, N.Y. Previously, he worked at Biomed Solutions in West Henrietta, N.Y., where he was involved with the development of pacemakers that could withstand an MRI environment. While at Biomed Solutions, he was involved with the 20 issued U.S. Patents in the field.
Patrick had Goldenhar syndrome, a craniofacial disorder that made him stand out and caused him to suffer inwardly more than he likely let on. At the same time, he had a great lust for life and was a constant fount of love, support, and inspiration to those around him.
I wonder if the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecology would count Goldenhar syndrome among the disabilities worthy of "deliberate intervention." The idea isn't so far-fetched: Dr. Warren Hern, a Boulder, Colo., doctor specializing in late-term abortions, boasts in a medical-journal article (featured on his Web site) that he aborted a baby girl at 33 weeks because she had Goldenhar.
The needle tip was placed in the cardiac ventricle of the abnormal fetus, a small amount of cardiac blood was aspirated, and 6 mEq of KCl [potassium chloride] were injected. Cardiac arrest occurred immediately, and this was observed for 5 min before the needle was withdrawn. ...
Approximately 5 weeks following the selective termination, the patient delivered a healthy male twin by cesarean delivery. The abnormal female twin A had an appearance consistent with Goldenhar syndrome. The surviving twin has shown exuberant health and normal development since delivery in March 2000.
That aptly labeled "surviving twin" will never again know the sister with whom he shared a womb for eight months. If the Royal College has its way, babies like that girl with Goldenhar syndrome may well be killed upon birth — saving their mothers the health risks and discomfort involved with late-term abortion. We will have a generation of mothers who have given birth only to deliver their children to death. And we will have no more people like Patrick Raymond Connelly to show us that there is more to life than having a normal face, normal brain, and normal body.
Patrick Connelly's family asks that donations be made in his memory to Inner Faces, Forward Face, 317 East 34th St., Suite 901A, New York, N.Y. 10016, www.forwardface.org.
*The story has gotten little coverage Stateside; I found it via Baptist Press.
"An odd assortment of characters on this race through the Big Apple. Most notably --- Papa Smurf. I thought for a second I had become delusional. I'm really going to have to take a break, I thought. But a fellow runner indeed told me Papa Smurf had just smoked my behind."
— Todd Starnes, who ran the New York City Marathon yesterday
"We’re beginning to wonder if we’re the only people who’ve ever watched ['Father Knows Best']. Of course, we felt the same way when Robert Young passed away in 1998. That’s when Ellen Goodman wrote a pandering piece ridiculing the legacy of both the actor and the series. 'In the real postwar era,' she assured us, 'men and women were going separate ways.'
Since I've yet to turn on my nice, modern, self-lighting gas oven (an incalculable improvement over my last apartment's "Honeymooners"-era model) since moving into my new place back in May, I can't say I quite get the Kitchen Madonna. Tonight, however, I dug deeper into her site than before and discovered we have something in common: We both use food analogies to describe the theology of the body. Hers, however, are far more appetizing than anything I could come up with, as she's not afraid to use real butter.
Today, at a workshop for Sisters of Life volunteers, I had the honor of meeting a pair of bright and vivacious juniors from Cardinal Spellman High School's Befrienders club. Members of the club, under the direction of religion teacher Father Peter Pilsner, make themselves available as friends to pregnant classmates who seek their support. If the pregnant classmates need material help, the Befrienders, acting in the strictest confidence, connect them with charities that provide housing and other resources.
Planned Parenthood and other organizations claiming to be pro-choice — that is, claiming to respect the choice of birth as well as the choice of abortion — have a multitude of "peer educator" programs, many of them taxpayer-funded, that are directed at reducing teens' birth rate through educating them about contraception or abortion (and sometimes abstinence, though with far less emphasis than the other options). Yet, I know of no pro-choice program specifically devoted to giving pregnant teens — at a time when they are most at risk of feeling alone, friendless, and fearful — the helping hands and hearts of young women in their own peer group.
Please pray for the Befrienders and the young women they serve. If you know of any similar groups among high-schoolers — clubs that not only "talk the talk" of life but also walk the walk by helping pregnant women — please feel free to share about them in the comments box.
Village Voice "Lusty Lady" columnist Rachel Kramer Bussel continues her exploration of virginity and chastity with a column that includes some quotes from me. (Be aware that the column includes four-letter words and graphic sexual language — not mine.) I'll say it again: As a sex columnist for the Voice who has made her reputation writing about anything but chastity, Bussel is remarkably courageous — especially with her closing zinger.
Many thanks to my blog buddy Saint Kansas for designing thrillofthechaste.com to promote my upcoming book. Right now, its main features include a page of endorsements and some upcoming appearance; an updated bio and links to news articles are in the pipeline.
