Fox admitted stopping meds to appear more disabled for 1999 Senate appearance
By Paul Ranalli, MD FRCPC Neurologist Toronto
TORONTO, October 31, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - There is no doubt that U.S. radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh's direct style and his own past medication issues make him an inviting target. And although he was, in all probability, technically inaccurate in accusing actor Michael J. Fox of "acting" in his recent political TV ad supporting a Democratic senatorial candidate, Limbaugh may have been very close to the mark. As a neurologist with a large number of Parkinson's disease patients, my impression of the video is that Fox displayed the poorly-controlled "choreo-athetotic" movements seen when advanced Parkinson's patients take their medication to turn "on" and emerge from their natural state of rigidity and rest tremor. At some point after taking a pill, a patient's voluntary movements are freed up, without much excess involuntary movement. The issue, then, is one of timing.
Fox himself has no doubt utilized this timing to affect a near-"normal" appearance on various TV late night talk show appearances over the past few years. Limbaugh twigged to the obvious observation that he appeared much worse in the Missouri Democratic Party ad than he has ever allowed himself to be seen in public before. Indeed, a few days after his political ad came out, Fox appeared at a Democratic event in Chicago with his movements under good control, a situation he called "ironic".
Parkinson’s patients become quite adept at predicting the timing and effect of their medications, such as when the golden period of each dose allows them to be freed of their natural rigidity yet not too obviously affected by these involuntary movements. Strangely, however, Fox seemed unable to appear controlled for the pre-taped TV ad, when the appropriate timing should have been easier, especially given the possibility of multiple "takes".
Lest this all sound too cynical, consider that Fox himself admitted in his 2002 autobiography to going off his medication to appear more disabled before a 1999 Senate subcommittee appearance. In his autobiography, "Lucky Man", Fox recalled his 1999 appearance before a Senate subcommittee in this way: "I had made a deliberate choice to appear before the subcommittee without medication . . . the transformation must have been startling." Democratic Party manipulation appears to go much further. In offering Mr. Fox as a spokesman, they have clearly hoped he would cut a sympathetic figure immune from criticism, and the faux outrage at Limbaugh's comments seems to confirm this.
While Fox deserves sympathy for this medical plight, he must assume full responsibility for his words and actions when he chooses to enter the political arena. He is not using his fame and suffering for a generic good like fundraising for Parkinson's research in general; he is, in effect, saying that if you care at all about Parkinson's patients getting better, vote for the Democratic Senate candidate in Missouri. Not coincidently, this is a pivotal state in the upcoming election to control the U.S. Senate.
The implication that only supporters of embryonic stem cell research care about hope for Parkinson's patients is not only unfair, it's deceitful.
There are considerably more promising new Parkinson's treatments closer to human application than stem cells. Everyone, including Republicans, supports the many treatments emerging for Parkinson's patients that promise more immediate application than do stem cells. For that matter, Republicans also support stem cell research when it comes from ethically sound sources such as adult tissues and umbilical cord blood.
Ironically, these forms of stem cells have had greater success to date than the embryonic-source stem cells lionized in the Michael J. Fox TV ad. Embryonic cells have been an utter failure to date, and just last week were revealed to cause uncontrolled brain tumors in a mouse experiment.
See related items:
Michael J. Fox is Right About One Thing: Pro-life Movement Must Oppose IVF
Original Michael Fox video promoting Missouri's Amendment 2 on stem cell research
Michael Fox responds to Limbaugh (video)
Michael J. Fox admits he hasn't read cloning measure
Actor Jim Caviezel Battles Michael J. Fox on Embryonic Stem Cell Video Ads
10.31.2006
10.21.2006
Bishops to Vote on Guidelines for Helping Catholics Prepare to Receive Communion
WASHINGTON, D.C., OCT. 19, 2006 (Zenit.org).- During their annual meeting next month the U.S. bishops will vote on a statement designed to help Catholics properly prepare to receive holy Communion.
The proposed document, "'Happy Are Those Who Are Called To His Supper': On Preparing to Receive Christ Worthily in the Eucharist," is not intended to be a technical document for bishops, pastors or ministers.
Rather, it is addressed to all the faithful and suitable for individual reading, parish study groups, and other education programs.
Organized as a series of questions and answers, the statement explores topics such as what the Catholic Church believes about the Eucharist, who may receive holy Communion, and how Catholics can prepare to receive the sacrament more worthily.
The statement reiterates Church teaching that with "few exceptions, only those who are members of the Catholic Church may receive holy Communion at a Catholic Eucharist."
Catholics should refrain from holy Communion, according to the statement, when they lack adherence to what the Church authoritatively teaches on matters of faith and morals or when a person is publicly known to have committed serious sin.
The proposed document, "'Happy Are Those Who Are Called To His Supper': On Preparing to Receive Christ Worthily in the Eucharist," is not intended to be a technical document for bishops, pastors or ministers.
Rather, it is addressed to all the faithful and suitable for individual reading, parish study groups, and other education programs.
Organized as a series of questions and answers, the statement explores topics such as what the Catholic Church believes about the Eucharist, who may receive holy Communion, and how Catholics can prepare to receive the sacrament more worthily.
The statement reiterates Church teaching that with "few exceptions, only those who are members of the Catholic Church may receive holy Communion at a Catholic Eucharist."
Catholics should refrain from holy Communion, according to the statement, when they lack adherence to what the Church authoritatively teaches on matters of faith and morals or when a person is publicly known to have committed serious sin.
10.20.2006
300 Million and the Environment
By Joseph A. D’Agostino
Opponents of population growth almost always cite environmental concerns, and this week’s media coverage of America hitting 300 million in population was not an exception. I have written recently about other myths connected to population growth, from suburban sprawl to immigration, and this week it’s time to talk about the environment.
Environmentalists’ big problem is that by almost every measure, the environment of the United States has gotten cleaner in recent decades as her population increased by 50%. Our population hit 200 million in 1967 and 300 million last Tuesday. In those 40 years, America cleaned herself up quite well. At the same time, the supply of natural resources has expanded, not contracted, as new discoveries and new technologies outpace resource consumption.
Keep in mind that ever since Protestant clergyman Thomas Malthus in the late 18th Century, doomsaying prophets have predicted that, due to the increasing human population, the world would soon run out of some resource, causing mass deaths and social collapse. When Malthus launched his jeremiads, the world’s population was approximately 1 billion. Today, it is over 6.5 billion, and we are still waiting for the extinction of any crucial natural resource.
Consider the following evidence for an ever-cleaner environment and more abundant natural resources:
* In 1982, half of our nation’s ozone monitoring stations detected levels exceeding the federal health standard. Twenty years later, only 13% did.
* Wrote Joel Schwartz in the Summer 2003 issue of Regulation, “Between 1981 and 2000, carbon monoxide (CO) declined 61%, sulfur dioxide (SO2) 50%, and nitrogen oxides (NOx)14%. Only two among hundreds of the nation’s monitoring locations still exceed the CO and SO2 standards. All areas of the country meet the NOx standard. For all three pollutants, pollution levels are well below the EPA standards in almost all cases.”
Indications are that our air has continued to get cleaner in the last three years. Emissions from cars and SUVs less than ten years old have dropped to a fraction of older cars’ levels. As older cars get junked and government-mandated clean technologies are implemented, car and SUV emissions are expected to drop by a further 90% over the next 20 years.
Breathe deep.
* Water has become similarly cleaner, and the United States’ drinking water is generally considered the best in the world. (I am not claiming that our water supply is free of pollution, just that it is cleaner than it was 30 years ago.) Reports the EPA, “The Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 has helped our citizens enjoy one of the safest and cleanest water supplies in the world. . . . In the last 30 years, we have significantly increased the number of individuals and communities receiving water that meets public health standards. More than 273 million people receive water from 53,000 community water systems. There has been a three-fold increase in the number of contaminants regulated under the Act since it was passed in 1974. Close to 92% of the nation’s water systems provide drinking water that meets all public health standards, and state and federal regulators are working to ensure that all systems meet standards.”
* Worrywarts now emphasize that America’s Western states could run out of water if population growth continues. It’s true that Western water, currently cheap even in most desert regions, could become modestly more expensive over time as demand increases. But running out is highly unlikely. California can prepare for growth in demand from 8.8 million acre-feet annually today to the expected 11.4 million acre-feet in 2020.
For example: “It is anticipated that another 162 [water] recycling plants will come on line this decade. These projects, which are mostly in southern California , are expected to produce up to 1 million acre-feet of recycled water annually by 2020,” says the Water Education Foundation.
Desalination plants, though expensive, could always provide more water for California and other Western states near the coast.
* Proven oil reserves are at an all-time high of 1 trillion barrels. Far from running out, we keep finding more of it. And in North America alone, there are an additional 2.3 trillion barrels of oil in shale and other forms currently too expensive to use. Technology may soon make them economically viable. Plenty of alternatives to petroleum currently exist, from liquefied coal to diesel from agricultural waste. And nuclear power is still there, ready to provide an almost inexhaustible supply of power for any purpose if people ever get over their hang-ups about it.
* World food production is so efficient that many governments, including our own, spend billions of dollars a year to pay farmers not to grow food in order to prevent a food price collapse. Barring some unforeseen blight on world agriculture, there is no chance of the world’s being unable to feed itself. Famines today are caused by distribution problems, usually produced by war or deliberately inflicted by corrupt governments to enhance their own power.
What of that massive political movement known as global warming, today’s fashionable secular substitute for the Biblical apocalypse? Bored of combating everyday environmental problems such as mercury in seafood and hormones in drinking water, environmentalists invented something much
sexier: The imminent destruction of Earth unless you do what we say! Why trudge to local land-use meetings to lobby for preserving open space when you can preach the salvation of the world like an Old Testament prophet?
One gains so much more social importance if people think you have the answer to averting Armageddon.
Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but global warming theology produces the same practical results as the socialism Western leftists have been forced to abandon: An immense increase in the power of the political/regulatory class and an immense reduction in the standard of living of ordinary people. Why have so many scientists jumped on the bandwagon? Contrary to popular myth, scientists are just as venal and fallible as anyone else, and he who pays the piper calls the tune.
As Patrick J. Michaels of the Cato Institute wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer on March 9, 2004, “Politics distorts science, particularly environmental science, because 99.99% of those sciences' financial support comes from the federal government. Scientists distort science because their careers depend on the money they bring to their university or their laboratory. Both the employees of the academy, and the academy itself, must support a political process that results in the exaggeration of threats. In competition for a finite federal outlay, scientists present their particular issues (global warming, cancer, AIDS) in the most urgent light possible, threatening societal ruin if their work isn't funded.”
And why wouldn’t federal bureaucrats want to hear evidence of a massive crisis that massively enhances their own power and budgets?
I’ve written about global warming hysteria before, so I will restrict myself today to noting the following:
* The Earth’s climate is always trending warmer or cooler at any given moment. There is no genuine evidence that any current warming trend (if one even exists) falls outside the range of natural climatic variation.
* According to global warming hysterics’ own studies, there is no correlation between when the bulk of man-made greenhouse gases were put into the atmosphere and warming. In fact, temperatures declined for decades during at least one of the most intense periods of industrialization.
* Proponents of the Kyoto protocol, which would decimate the standards of living of the common peoples of America and Western Europe, themselves admit that it would have no significant effect on stopping warming. They want something far more radical and which would have to apply to the whole world to work.
* The Western world continues to transfer its industrial capacity to the Third World. China and India, which together have over one-third of the world’s people, are rapidly industrializing and aren’t going to stay mired in poverty no matter what Western political hacks and their bought-and-paid-for pointy-headed experts say. Reducing the world’s overall greenhouse gas emissions is impossible. Instead, it is as certain as such a thing can be that greenhouse gas emissions will continue to rise for decades to come, even if Al Gore becomes President of the United States—-unless affordable technologies that allow unfettered industrial development but prevent greenhouse gas emissions are invented and then adopted by the Third World.
* In the 1970s, it was fashionable to worry about “global cooling,” supposedly caused by man-made pollution in the atmosphere blocking out the sun’s energy. Fifteen years later, media-favored experts starting talking about global warming supposedly caused by man-made pollution trapping in the sun’s energy.
There is no correlation between population growth or population density and environmental degradation. Instead, wealth correlates to environmental degradation and then improvement. When a country begins to develop, her environment suffers. But when she has reached a certain level, between $3,500 and $15,000 in per capita income, her environment begins to improve as people can afford (and demand) cleaner technologies.
And then the wealthier they get, the cleaner their environment becomes.
That’s why ultra-poor subsistence-level areas, Western Europe, Canada, and the United States all have the cleanest environments. Getting China, India, and other developing countries over the wealth hump is the surest way to improve the world’s environment. Preserving America’s economic and per capita wealth growth is the best way of continuing to improve ours.
Joseph A. D'Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the Population Research Institute.
________
PRI
P.O. Box 1559
Front Royal, Va. 22630
USA
Phone: (540) 622-5240 Fax: (540) 622-2728
Email: jad@pop.org
Media Contact: Joseph A. D'Agostino
(540) 622-5240, ext. 204
Website: www.pop.org
Opponents of population growth almost always cite environmental concerns, and this week’s media coverage of America hitting 300 million in population was not an exception. I have written recently about other myths connected to population growth, from suburban sprawl to immigration, and this week it’s time to talk about the environment.
Environmentalists’ big problem is that by almost every measure, the environment of the United States has gotten cleaner in recent decades as her population increased by 50%. Our population hit 200 million in 1967 and 300 million last Tuesday. In those 40 years, America cleaned herself up quite well. At the same time, the supply of natural resources has expanded, not contracted, as new discoveries and new technologies outpace resource consumption.
Keep in mind that ever since Protestant clergyman Thomas Malthus in the late 18th Century, doomsaying prophets have predicted that, due to the increasing human population, the world would soon run out of some resource, causing mass deaths and social collapse. When Malthus launched his jeremiads, the world’s population was approximately 1 billion. Today, it is over 6.5 billion, and we are still waiting for the extinction of any crucial natural resource.
Consider the following evidence for an ever-cleaner environment and more abundant natural resources:
* In 1982, half of our nation’s ozone monitoring stations detected levels exceeding the federal health standard. Twenty years later, only 13% did.
* Wrote Joel Schwartz in the Summer 2003 issue of Regulation, “Between 1981 and 2000, carbon monoxide (CO) declined 61%, sulfur dioxide (SO2) 50%, and nitrogen oxides (NOx)14%. Only two among hundreds of the nation’s monitoring locations still exceed the CO and SO2 standards. All areas of the country meet the NOx standard. For all three pollutants, pollution levels are well below the EPA standards in almost all cases.”
Indications are that our air has continued to get cleaner in the last three years. Emissions from cars and SUVs less than ten years old have dropped to a fraction of older cars’ levels. As older cars get junked and government-mandated clean technologies are implemented, car and SUV emissions are expected to drop by a further 90% over the next 20 years.
Breathe deep.
* Water has become similarly cleaner, and the United States’ drinking water is generally considered the best in the world. (I am not claiming that our water supply is free of pollution, just that it is cleaner than it was 30 years ago.) Reports the EPA, “The Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 has helped our citizens enjoy one of the safest and cleanest water supplies in the world. . . . In the last 30 years, we have significantly increased the number of individuals and communities receiving water that meets public health standards. More than 273 million people receive water from 53,000 community water systems. There has been a three-fold increase in the number of contaminants regulated under the Act since it was passed in 1974. Close to 92% of the nation’s water systems provide drinking water that meets all public health standards, and state and federal regulators are working to ensure that all systems meet standards.”
* Worrywarts now emphasize that America’s Western states could run out of water if population growth continues. It’s true that Western water, currently cheap even in most desert regions, could become modestly more expensive over time as demand increases. But running out is highly unlikely. California can prepare for growth in demand from 8.8 million acre-feet annually today to the expected 11.4 million acre-feet in 2020.
For example: “It is anticipated that another 162 [water] recycling plants will come on line this decade. These projects, which are mostly in southern California , are expected to produce up to 1 million acre-feet of recycled water annually by 2020,” says the Water Education Foundation.
Desalination plants, though expensive, could always provide more water for California and other Western states near the coast.
* Proven oil reserves are at an all-time high of 1 trillion barrels. Far from running out, we keep finding more of it. And in North America alone, there are an additional 2.3 trillion barrels of oil in shale and other forms currently too expensive to use. Technology may soon make them economically viable. Plenty of alternatives to petroleum currently exist, from liquefied coal to diesel from agricultural waste. And nuclear power is still there, ready to provide an almost inexhaustible supply of power for any purpose if people ever get over their hang-ups about it.
* World food production is so efficient that many governments, including our own, spend billions of dollars a year to pay farmers not to grow food in order to prevent a food price collapse. Barring some unforeseen blight on world agriculture, there is no chance of the world’s being unable to feed itself. Famines today are caused by distribution problems, usually produced by war or deliberately inflicted by corrupt governments to enhance their own power.
What of that massive political movement known as global warming, today’s fashionable secular substitute for the Biblical apocalypse? Bored of combating everyday environmental problems such as mercury in seafood and hormones in drinking water, environmentalists invented something much
sexier: The imminent destruction of Earth unless you do what we say! Why trudge to local land-use meetings to lobby for preserving open space when you can preach the salvation of the world like an Old Testament prophet?
One gains so much more social importance if people think you have the answer to averting Armageddon.
Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but global warming theology produces the same practical results as the socialism Western leftists have been forced to abandon: An immense increase in the power of the political/regulatory class and an immense reduction in the standard of living of ordinary people. Why have so many scientists jumped on the bandwagon? Contrary to popular myth, scientists are just as venal and fallible as anyone else, and he who pays the piper calls the tune.
As Patrick J. Michaels of the Cato Institute wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer on March 9, 2004, “Politics distorts science, particularly environmental science, because 99.99% of those sciences' financial support comes from the federal government. Scientists distort science because their careers depend on the money they bring to their university or their laboratory. Both the employees of the academy, and the academy itself, must support a political process that results in the exaggeration of threats. In competition for a finite federal outlay, scientists present their particular issues (global warming, cancer, AIDS) in the most urgent light possible, threatening societal ruin if their work isn't funded.”
And why wouldn’t federal bureaucrats want to hear evidence of a massive crisis that massively enhances their own power and budgets?
I’ve written about global warming hysteria before, so I will restrict myself today to noting the following:
* The Earth’s climate is always trending warmer or cooler at any given moment. There is no genuine evidence that any current warming trend (if one even exists) falls outside the range of natural climatic variation.
* According to global warming hysterics’ own studies, there is no correlation between when the bulk of man-made greenhouse gases were put into the atmosphere and warming. In fact, temperatures declined for decades during at least one of the most intense periods of industrialization.
* Proponents of the Kyoto protocol, which would decimate the standards of living of the common peoples of America and Western Europe, themselves admit that it would have no significant effect on stopping warming. They want something far more radical and which would have to apply to the whole world to work.
* The Western world continues to transfer its industrial capacity to the Third World. China and India, which together have over one-third of the world’s people, are rapidly industrializing and aren’t going to stay mired in poverty no matter what Western political hacks and their bought-and-paid-for pointy-headed experts say. Reducing the world’s overall greenhouse gas emissions is impossible. Instead, it is as certain as such a thing can be that greenhouse gas emissions will continue to rise for decades to come, even if Al Gore becomes President of the United States—-unless affordable technologies that allow unfettered industrial development but prevent greenhouse gas emissions are invented and then adopted by the Third World.
* In the 1970s, it was fashionable to worry about “global cooling,” supposedly caused by man-made pollution in the atmosphere blocking out the sun’s energy. Fifteen years later, media-favored experts starting talking about global warming supposedly caused by man-made pollution trapping in the sun’s energy.
There is no correlation between population growth or population density and environmental degradation. Instead, wealth correlates to environmental degradation and then improvement. When a country begins to develop, her environment suffers. But when she has reached a certain level, between $3,500 and $15,000 in per capita income, her environment begins to improve as people can afford (and demand) cleaner technologies.
And then the wealthier they get, the cleaner their environment becomes.
That’s why ultra-poor subsistence-level areas, Western Europe, Canada, and the United States all have the cleanest environments. Getting China, India, and other developing countries over the wealth hump is the surest way to improve the world’s environment. Preserving America’s economic and per capita wealth growth is the best way of continuing to improve ours.
Joseph A. D'Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the Population Research Institute.
________
PRI
P.O. Box 1559
Front Royal, Va. 22630
USA
Phone: (540) 622-5240 Fax: (540) 622-2728
Email: jad@pop.org
Media Contact: Joseph A. D'Agostino
(540) 622-5240, ext. 204
Website: www.pop.org
10.17.2006
300 Million or not- OVERPOPULATION is a MYTH
Why are there still people on the OVERPOPULATION bandwagon?
There are plenty of reputable research councils, including the UN, that have been predicting and reporting on birth dearths around the world. Italy, Germany, Spain, France, virtually all of Europe, are below replacement level. This is nothing new! This press release from the United Nations referred to research from 2002.
From a report of the Population Division of the UN:
Here are more good links:
One neat fact in circulation is that the whole popluation of the world could fit into the state of Texas, each with his/her own acre of land!
There are plenty of reputable research councils, including the UN, that have been predicting and reporting on birth dearths around the world. Italy, Germany, Spain, France, virtually all of Europe, are below replacement level. This is nothing new! This press release from the United Nations referred to research from 2002.
From a report of the Population Division of the UN:
Only in seven countries (three developing and four developed, including the United States)current fertility implies a near-replacement of generations. In 16 countries (including France and the United Kingdom) fertility levels vary from 1.60 to 1.85 children per woman; another 11 countries(including Germany and Poland) are characterized by TFR from 1.35 to 1.60 children per woman. But the“lowest low” category with 20 countries is the largest; it includes a number of relatively small countries(in terms of population size) but also Japan, Italy, Russian Federation and Ukraine.
Here are more good links:
- From the Population Council
A PBS Interview with Joseph Chamie of the United Nations Population Division, Alaka Basu from the Harvard Center of Population and Development Studies; and Riad Tabarrah, Director of the Center for Development Studies and Projects in Beirut, Lebanon.
Homepage of the Population Research Institute-lots to read
A news report regarding the amount of untouched land and wilderness in the world
One neat fact in circulation is that the whole popluation of the world could fit into the state of Texas, each with his/her own acre of land!
Population Group Says 300 Million Americans Is Not Enough
Just released from the Population Research Institute:
FRONT ROYAL, Va.—Contradicting what many experts have been saying, the Population Research Institute (PRI) believes that the United States is suffering from insufficient population growth even though the U.S. Census Bureau says the American population will reach 300 million tomorrow.
“When you look at the projections that show our population aging rapidly over the next few decades, when you see our economy and government programs such as Social Security risking bankruptcy, you can see that the United States’ annual 0.9% population growth rate is not enough,” said Steven Mosher, President of PRI. “America’s baby boomers didn’t have many children on average, and as a result, our country faces a gray dawn. Even our currently high immigration levels haven’t made up the difference.”
“According to United Nations figures, the percentage of the American population 65 or over will rise from 12.3% today to 20.6% by 2050. The proportion of Americans 80 or over will rise from 3.6% to 7.3% of the population,” said Joseph A. D’Agostino, Vice President for Communications at PRI. “Our worker-to-retiree ratio is already at a dangerous 3-to-1.
By 2050, it will be 2-to-1. And those retirees will be living much longer than they do today thanks to beneficial improvements in health care.
We’ve been trying to make up for our low birthrate though lots of immigration, which has created its own problems. But if Americans won’t create the next generation, then it must be imported.”
The birthrate of the United States is 2.0 children per woman, slightly less than the replacement rate of 2.1. Without immigrants, the birthrate would be even lower. As we have noted previously, the United States’ population density is 31 people per square kilometer, well below the world average of 48 and far below those of most Western European nations.
Americans continue to leave rural areas for large metropolitan areas, creating the illusion that America is becoming overpopulated. Yet only 4.7% of American land is built up.
10.15.2006
Why marry? It's just a piece of paper!
Five non-religious arguments for marriage over living together
By Dennis Prager
I have always believed that there is no comparing living together with marriage. There are enormous differences between being a "husband" or a "wife" and being a "partner," a "friend" or a "significant other"; between a legal commitment and a voluntary association; between standing before family and community to publicly announce one's commitment to another person on the one hand and simply living together on the other.
But attending the weddings of two of my three children this past summer made the differences far clearer and far more significant.
First, no matter what you think when living together, your relationship with your significant other changes the moment you marry. You have now made a commitment to each other as husband and wife in front of almost everyone significant in your life. You now see each other in a different and more serious light.
Second, words matter. They deeply affect us and others. Living with your "boyfriend" is not the same as living with your "husband." And living with your "girlfriend" or any other title you give her is not the same as making a home with your "wife." Likewise when you introduce that person as your wife or husband to people, you are making a far more important statement of that person's role in your life than you are with any other title.
Third, legality matters. Being legally bound to and responsible for another person matters. It is an announcement to him/her and to yourself that you take this relationship with the utmost seriousness. No words of affection or promises of commitment, no matter how sincere, can match the seriousness of legal commitment.
Fourth, to better appreciate just how important marriage is to the vast majority of people in your life, consider this: There is no event, no occasion, no moment in your life when so many of the people who matter to you will convene in one place as they will at your wedding. Not the birth of any of your children, not any milestone birthday you may celebrate, not your child's bar-mitzvah or confirmation. The only other time so many of those you care about and who care about you will gather in one place is at your funeral. But by then, unless you die young, nearly all those you love who are older than you will have already died.
So this is it. Your wedding will be the greatest gathering of loved ones in your life. There is a reason. It is the biggest moment of your life. No such event will ever happen if you do not have a wedding.
Fifth, only with marriage will your man's or your woman's family ever become your family. The two weddings transformed the woman in my son's life into my daughter-in-law and transformed the man in my daughter's life into my son-in-law. And I was instantly transformed from the father of their boyfriend or girlfriend into their father-in-law. This was the most dramatic new realization for me. I was now related to my children's partners. Their siblings and parents became family. Nothing comparable happens when two people live together without getting married.
Many women callers to my radio show have told me that the man in their life sees no reason to marry. "It's only a piece of paper," these men (and now some women) argue.
There are two answers to this argument.
One is that if in fact "it is only a piece of paper," what exactly is he so afraid of? Why does he fear a mere piece of paper? Either he is lying to himself and to his woman or lying only to her because he knows this piece of paper is far more than "only a piece of paper."
The other response is all that is written above. Getting married means I am now your wife, not your live-in; I am now your husband, not your significant other. It means that we get to have a wedding where, before virtually every person alive who means anything to us, we commit ourselves to each other. It means that we have decided to bring all these people we love into our lives. It means we have legal obligations to one another. It means my family becomes yours and yours becomes mine.
Thank God my children, ages 30 and 23, decided to marry. Their partners are now my daughter-in-law and son-in-law. They are therefore now mine to love, not merely two people whom my children love.
When you realize all that is attainable by marrying and unattainable by living together without marrying, you have to wonder why anyone would voluntarily choose not to marry the person he or she wishes to live with forever.
Unless, of course, one of you really isn't planning on forever.
By Dennis Prager
I have always believed that there is no comparing living together with marriage. There are enormous differences between being a "husband" or a "wife" and being a "partner," a "friend" or a "significant other"; between a legal commitment and a voluntary association; between standing before family and community to publicly announce one's commitment to another person on the one hand and simply living together on the other.
But attending the weddings of two of my three children this past summer made the differences far clearer and far more significant.
First, no matter what you think when living together, your relationship with your significant other changes the moment you marry. You have now made a commitment to each other as husband and wife in front of almost everyone significant in your life. You now see each other in a different and more serious light.
Second, words matter. They deeply affect us and others. Living with your "boyfriend" is not the same as living with your "husband." And living with your "girlfriend" or any other title you give her is not the same as making a home with your "wife." Likewise when you introduce that person as your wife or husband to people, you are making a far more important statement of that person's role in your life than you are with any other title.
Third, legality matters. Being legally bound to and responsible for another person matters. It is an announcement to him/her and to yourself that you take this relationship with the utmost seriousness. No words of affection or promises of commitment, no matter how sincere, can match the seriousness of legal commitment.
Fourth, to better appreciate just how important marriage is to the vast majority of people in your life, consider this: There is no event, no occasion, no moment in your life when so many of the people who matter to you will convene in one place as they will at your wedding. Not the birth of any of your children, not any milestone birthday you may celebrate, not your child's bar-mitzvah or confirmation. The only other time so many of those you care about and who care about you will gather in one place is at your funeral. But by then, unless you die young, nearly all those you love who are older than you will have already died.
So this is it. Your wedding will be the greatest gathering of loved ones in your life. There is a reason. It is the biggest moment of your life. No such event will ever happen if you do not have a wedding.
Fifth, only with marriage will your man's or your woman's family ever become your family. The two weddings transformed the woman in my son's life into my daughter-in-law and transformed the man in my daughter's life into my son-in-law. And I was instantly transformed from the father of their boyfriend or girlfriend into their father-in-law. This was the most dramatic new realization for me. I was now related to my children's partners. Their siblings and parents became family. Nothing comparable happens when two people live together without getting married.
Many women callers to my radio show have told me that the man in their life sees no reason to marry. "It's only a piece of paper," these men (and now some women) argue.
There are two answers to this argument.
One is that if in fact "it is only a piece of paper," what exactly is he so afraid of? Why does he fear a mere piece of paper? Either he is lying to himself and to his woman or lying only to her because he knows this piece of paper is far more than "only a piece of paper."
The other response is all that is written above. Getting married means I am now your wife, not your live-in; I am now your husband, not your significant other. It means that we get to have a wedding where, before virtually every person alive who means anything to us, we commit ourselves to each other. It means that we have decided to bring all these people we love into our lives. It means we have legal obligations to one another. It means my family becomes yours and yours becomes mine.
Thank God my children, ages 30 and 23, decided to marry. Their partners are now my daughter-in-law and son-in-law. They are therefore now mine to love, not merely two people whom my children love.
When you realize all that is attainable by marrying and unattainable by living together without marrying, you have to wonder why anyone would voluntarily choose not to marry the person he or she wishes to live with forever.
Unless, of course, one of you really isn't planning on forever.
10.08.2006
Father Cantalamessa on Marriage
"Rediscover the Art of Repairing!" Says Pontifical Household PreacherThe Two Shall Become One Flesh
Genesis 2:18-24; Hebrews 2:9-11; Mark 10:2-16
The topic of this 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time is marriage. The first reading (Genesis 2:18-24) begins with the well-known words: "The Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.'"
In our days the evil of marriage is separation and divorce, whereas in the time of Jesus it was repudiation. In a certain sense, the latter was a worse evil, because it also implied an injustice in regard to the woman, which, sadly, persists in certain cultures. Man, in fact, had the right to repudiate his wife, but the wife did not have the right to repudiate her husband.
There were two opposite opinions in Judaism, in regard to repudiation. According to one of them, it was lawful to repudiate one's wife for any reason, hence, at the discretion of the husband. According to another, however, a grave reason was necessary, established by the law.
One day they subjected Jesus to this question, hoping that he would adopt a position in favor of one or the other thesis. However, they received an answer they did not expect: "Because of the hardness of your hearts he [Moses] wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother (and be joined to his wife), and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate."
The law of Moses about repudiation is seen by Christ as an unwanted disposition, but tolerated by God (as polygamy and other disorders), because of hardness of heart and human immaturity. Jesus did not criticize Moses for the concession made; he recognized that in this matter the human lawmaker cannot fail to keep in mind the reality in fact.
However, he re-proposed to all the original ideal of the indissoluble union between man and woman -- "one flesh" -- that, at least for his disciples, must be the only form possible of marriage.
However, Jesus did not limit himself to reaffirming the law; he added grace to it. This means that Christian spouses not only have the duty to remain faithful until death; they also have the necessary aids to do so. From Christ's redeeming death comes a strength -- the Holy Spirit -- which permeates every aspect of the believer's life, including marriage. The latter is even raised to the dignity of a sacrament and of living image of the spousal union with the Church on the cross (Ephesians 5:31-32).
To say that marriage is a sacrament does not only mean -- as often believed -- that in it the union of the sexes is permitted, licit and good, which outside of it would be disorder and sin; it means even more yet, to say that marriage becomes a way of being united to Christ through love of the other, a real path of sanctification.
This positive view is the one that Benedict XVI happily showed in his encyclical "Deus Caritas Est" on love and charity. In it the Pope does not compare the indissoluble union in marriage to another form of erotic love; but presents it as the most mature and perfect form, not only from the Christian, but also from the human point of view.
"It is part of love's growth toward higher levels and inward purification that it now seeks to become definitive, and it does so in a twofold sense: both in the sense of exclusivity (this particular person alone) and in the sense of being 'forever.' Love embraces the whole of existence in each of its dimensions, including the dimension of time. It could hardly be otherwise, since its promise looks toward its definitive goal: love looks to the eternal" (No. 60).
This ideal of conjugal fidelity has never been easy (adultery is a word that resounds ominously even in the Bible!). But today the permissive and hedonist culture in which we live has made it immensely more difficult. The alarming crisis that the institution of marriage is going through in our society is easy for all to see.
Civil laws, such as that in Spain, permit (and indirectly, in this way, encourage!) beginning divorce proceedings just a few months after life in common. Words like: "I am sick of this life," "I'm going," "If it's like this, each one on his own!" are uttered between spouses at the first difficulty.
Let it be said in passing: I believe that Christian spouses should accuse themselves in confession of the simple fact of having uttered one of these words, because the sole fact of saying them is an offense to the unity, and constitutes a dangerous psychological precedent.
In this marriage suffers the common mentality of "use and discard." If a device or tool is in some way damaged or dented, no thought is given to repairing it -- those who did such repairs have disappeared -- there is only thought of replacing it. Applied to marriage, this mentality is deadly.
What can be done to contain this tendency, cause of so much evil for society and so much sadness for children? I have a suggestion: Rediscover the art of repairing!
Replace the "use and discard" mentality with that of "use and repair." Almost no one does repairs now. But if this art of repairing is no longer done for clothes, it must be practiced in marriage. Repair the big tears, and repair them immediately.
St. Paul gave very good counsels in this respect: "Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil," "forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other," "Bear one another's burdens" (Ephesians 4:26-27; Colossians 3:13; Galatians 6:2).
What is important is that one must understand that in this process of tears and repairs, of crises and surmounted obstacles, marriage is not exhausted, but is refined and improves. I perceive an analogy between the process that leads to a successful marriage and one that leads to holiness.
In their path toward perfection, the saints often go through the so-called dark night of the senses, in which they no longer experience any feeling, or impulse.
They have aridity, are empty, do everything through will power alone and with effort. After this, comes the "dark night of the spirit," in which not only feelings enter into crisis, but also the intelligence and will. There is even doubt that one is on the right road; if it has not all been an error; complete darkness, endless temptations. They go forward only through faith.
Does everything end then? On the contrary! All this was but purification. After they have passed through these crises, the saints realize how much more profound and selfless their love of God now is, in relation to that of the beginning.
For many couples, it will not be difficult to recognize their own experience. They have also frequently gone through the night of the senses in their marriage, in which the latter have no rapture of ecstasy, and if there ever was, it is only a memory of the past. Some also experience the dark night of the spirit, the state in which the profoundest option is in crisis, and it seems that there is no longer anything in common.
If with good will and the help of someone these crises are surmounted, one realizes to what point the impulse and enthusiasm of the first days was but little compared to the stable love and communion matured over the years.
If at first husband and wife loved one another for the satisfaction it gave them, today perhaps they love one another a bit more with a love of tenderness, free of egoism and capable of compassion; they love one another for the things they have gone through and suffered together.
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