Drugs, the law, and morality

For some reason, it’s a headline that the Pope is against legalization of recreational drug use. At first thought, I tend to agree, but I am not sure it’s so simple in practice.
Much has been written on the subject lately, and I completely agree that it’s sinful to
a) use any otherwise acceptable activity excessively (Cardinal Virtue of Temperance/Aristotelian Mean)
B) intentionally impair one’s judgement so as to make moral decisions more difficult
C) cause direct harm to one’s body.

It’s very clear when some drugs do all three, but what about tobacco, alcohol and even caffeine? Those would be considered acceptable in moderation, but cause damage long-term.

All three of those standards could apply to food as a drug. Certainly, gluttony is a mortal sin, but should it be a crime?

What about self-medication? Various layers of mental health? Prescription drug use?

It’s a complicated matter when it comes to legalities, civil liberties, etc., and enforcing laws. In the name of making it harder to abuse prescription drugs, the FDA has made harder and more costly for those of us with actual health problems to get our meds. Then there’s the issue of drug testing for employment, etc., and people having to reveal medical problems to their employers.
That’s not getting into things like “no knock” raids that have made headlines recently, where SWAT teams invade homes of “suspected” drug dealers/addicts and burst in without warning to avoid “flushing.” Innocent bystanders and even innocent suspects get injured or killed, even if they have the wrong house altogether.
They’ll do the whole “witch hunt” thing and send innocent family members to prison for the “crime” of not knowing anything while the actual criminals make deals and name names. Then property involved in illegal drugs can be seized. Back in Virginia about ten years ago, there was a case where a man bought a house from a judge’s ex-wife shortly after their son was arrested for dealing marijuana. Somehow, the judge’s wife got to keep the money from the sale but the buyer lost the house to the state.
Then there’s the so-called “right to privacy” that selectively applies to birth control.

I don’t think drug use should be legal, but it shouldn’t be “illegal,” either. It should be treated as a medical and psychological matter.

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Personhood in South Carolina: Vote Today!

In addition to the GOP primaries for the House and 2 Senate seats (strangely, Tim Scott does have a challenger, and we really need to unseat the Planned Parenthood supporting Democrat wannabe Lindsey Graham), there is a personhood referendum on today’s ballot.

Please vote!

On the St. Malachi thing

Imagine, if you will, a colonist in the late 1600’s reports a vision that, some day, the colonies will be independent and have a Republic, and that he foresaw the heads of that Republic. Over time, as this alleged vision gets closer to reality, it gets talked about. History proceeds. Somewhere in the 1960s, someone claims to have found the prophecy and publishes the colonist’s list of the Presidents. It says something like, “The first will be the cleanly town. The second will be the son of Man. The third will buy the west. . . . The sixteenth will be the Man who frees. . . .” And so on till, “the thirty-fifth will be cut short.” Then it starts more like, “37 will end a war.” “40 will speak.” “43 will be the Sun.” “44 will be the moon.”
In other words, the alleged prophecy of St. Malachy was more exact before it was published, and gets increasingly vague such that people have really had to stretch to make them fit.

Abortion hurts everyone

Sharon Osbourne and Toni Braxton have both recently spoken out about their pain as post abortive women.

She recounted: “I had an abortion at 17 and it was the worst thing I ever did . . . I went alone. I was terrified. It was full of other young girls, and we were all terrified and looking at each other and nobody was saying a bloody word. I howled my way through it, and it was horrible. I would never recommend it to anyone because it comes back to haunt you. When I tried to have children, I lost three — I think it was because something had happened to my cervix during the abortion.</blockquote<

When Mary was going through the miscarriage, I was very stoic for days. She laid in her parents' bed through the process. Her (adult) brothers thought she was "just sick."

As the "tissue" started coming out, we collected the remains to seek some kind of burial (that's another story).

Shortly after the main body came out, I passed through their living room, where my brother-in-law was watching CNN and some pro-abort sicko was talking, and I just started howling. "What's wrong with John?" He asked.

I ran down the hall and picked up the container that held the remains, and I just screamed for I-don't-know-how-long.

The greatest pain is knowing that your baby died, a human life was created and ended-as all must do-and wondering what happened to that young soul (that's another discussion), not being able to really know him or her at all or know if you ever will.

The second greatest pain is knowing that society says "It's just a blob of tissue. You're grieving for a life that was cut short before most people realized there was one there, and while 1 in 6 pregnancies end by natural miscarriage, the grief is secret.

To protect the so-called "right to choose," we suppress parents' right to grieve. That fundamental principle was the original reason for the "Lewis Crusade," originally intended as an Apostolate, not simply a blog.

Personhood Now.

I still cry sometimes.

A funny thing happened on the way to Confession . . .

I had made a point of trying to get my family to Confession in the midst of other Saturday plans.
Then I was in bed with chest pain, so we were running late but got there around 4:45. The Confessional was dark; no sign of a priest. I noticed my wife hadn’t followed us in, and we were leaving anyway, when I found her standing by the van, the rear gate still open. There was oily fluid all over the ground, and she showed me how the fluid streamed out when she opened and closed the wheelchair lift:
Hydraulic fluid, leaking out of the pistons.
Great.
We’d “just” had them replaced, four years ago. Seems like just yesterday but forever. That was right after the second engine (for us, third for it) in our handicapped adapted 2000 Chevy Express 3500. Turns out, 4 years is about as long as those pistons last. Now I know, but while we have started budgeting for repairs, we just put a bunch of money into “regular” repairs, and she’s had to pay cash for some graduate courses. We were just starting to work on tightening the budget a bit more to save for emergencies and hopefully a down payment on a house in a year or two. We’d like to finally live in a house big enough for 4 kids sometime before they’re adults.

So, here we are, looking at another repair that could reach into the thousands. We tried Modest Needs 4 or 5 years ago, but that’s “All or Nothing.” This time, we went with GoFundMe, which takes a fee but sends the money as it’s donated.

Since Saturday night when I set it up, we’ve already raised about $470. In the morning, I will take it to a repair place and get a more exact estimate. Please pray, donate or at least share the link.
my GoFundMe Campaign

Why do politicians neglect their most basic duty?

All human life is sacred. Every one of us should be honored and respected as the immortal beings that we are, made in the image and likeness of God. The desecration of people’s bodies in the name of animalistic pleasure is degrading to both the victims and perpetrators of the violence. Socrates taught that it is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and rapists and murderers hurt themselves, in the long run, perhaps worse than their victims. The most fundamental purpose of civil law is to protect citizens from harming each other, as well as themselves, and any government that fails to protect the weak from the strong is a failed government.

I need your help. Two young girls were hanged from a tree after being gang raped in the fields outside their home in India and a minister from the ruling party just responded by saying that rape “is a social crime … sometimes it’s right, sometimes it’s wrong.”

It’s disgusting! But this isn’t an isolated incident. I’ve been attacked in front of senior policemen and nothing was done. I know the system is totally failing India’s women. But together I think we can change it.

My country’s new leader ran on the promise of rebuilding the holy city, Varanasi, where he was elected, as a major tourist hub. If we build a millions-strong global call for the protection of women and plaster it all over Prime Minister Modi’s city, he’ll be forced to act to save his tourism plan.

An ad campaign like this has never happened before in India. But this is a national crisis and it requires drastic action. Sign now — let’s get two million people to demand Modi protects India’s girls and women.

Alaphia Zoyab, Avaaz campaigner

Please sign this petition to the Indian government to take action against rape gangs

What does it mean to be “Positive”?

“Turn The Radio Up,” the first single from Barry Manilow’s 2001 Here at the Mayflower, was his first top 40 hit on the Billboard A/C charts since 1989’s “Keep Each Other Warm.”
Often compared to “Daybreak,” it’s a catchy tune of the “inspirational” sort, but in the context of recent thoughts, Something occurred to me listening to it yesterday:

turn the radio up
hear the melody
turn reality down
there’s too much talk about blues
to much of the time
turn the radio up
hear the harmony
turn the negative down
turn the radio up
everything will be fine

Primarily an emotion-based message, it works like any platitude in certain contexts. If “listening to the radio” is taken as a metaphor for rather than distraction from prayer, it works.
However,

worryin’ don’t do no good
so throw your cares away
come on people life’s too
short a stay
hey hey
everybody now

Again, a worthy though on its own, but there’s a subtle problem: feeling well is what counts, not being good.

Now the one that struck me, in terms of how words are ambiguated:

don’t give in
no matter what they say
out with the negative
you find the positive way

“Positive” has come to mean, “feels good,” while “negative” is “feels bad,” versus meaning “adds something” or “does something” on the one hand or “takes away something” or “does nothing” on the other. Technically, in one sense of the “negative way,” the essence of Carmelite spirituality, the approach to problems Barry is suggesting–shutting out the world and praying–is the “negative way,” the way of negation.
In a different perspective, though, the sense of “positivity” here, the annoying way of the optimist, the positivity of the person who smiles with not true joy or humor, is a bad negativity: listening to other people fiddle while Rome burns, so to speak.
To be detached for God is as “positive” as it gets. To be detached and not care-whether one’s expression is a frown or a smile-is truly negative.
That is why, when one suggests, “As Catholics, we need to be more positive,” meaning, “We have to do stuff, not just complain,” some people get angrier and think you mean “Shut up and do nothing and post cute cat pictures.”
It’s also why, in “support groups,” if you talk about the actual problems you’re there to get “support” for, people say, “you’re being too negative.”

What is Satan’s “Goal”?

A friend once told me a joke that illustrates, in reverse, a question that has always puzzled me.
Teresa of Calcutta dies. Jesus embraces her and says, “Welcome to Heaven! You have served Me well. Come enjoy the Supper of the Lamb!” He serves her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
She says, “Lord, I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but, after all my sacrifice, I had kind of expected more of a Heavenly banquet?”
“With only two people, why bother to cook?”

People speculate about whether Hell is “empty,” or near-empty, but what if Heaven is? St. Teresa of Avila says somewhere that God only needs two Saints in the world to have the Church. What if the few thousand people recognized as Beati and Saints are really the only people in Heaven?

Would that mean Christ’s sacrifice was in vain?
What is the Devil’s “goal”? Does it really think it can “win”?

The Time I got a Letter from Bill Donohue (sort of)

I maintain, therefore, that the common sociological method is quite useless: that of first dissecting abject poverty or cataloguing prostitution. We all dislike abject poverty; but it might be another business if we began to discuss independent and dignified poverty. We all disapprove of prostitution; but we do not all approve of purity. The only way to discuss the social evil is to get at once to the social ideal. We can all see the national madness; but what is national sanity? I have called this book “What Is Wrong with the World?” and the upshot of the title can be easily and clearly stated. What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right.

– GK Chesterton

Back in 1998, when the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights was still that, and not the sounding board for every personal opinion of Dr. Bill Donohue, I got a survey that they sent out to people on their mailing list, asking my opinions on various matters of anti-Catholicism.  Instead of filling out the survey, I wrote a letter.  I explained how I really supported their work, but I felt that sometimes they emphasized the negative.  While some things need to be called out, criticized, boycotted or whatever (Nothing Sacred), sometimes they seemed to give undue attention to bad stuff that nobody would notice, and that was done purely to raise anger to begin with (a crucifix in a jar of urine).  On the other hand, they never seemed to draw attention to what was right, and I gave some examples of positive portrayals of Christianity or Catholicism in popular culture that ought to get some attention.
A few weeks later, I got a letter in the mail.  “Dear Mr. Hathaway, I am Dr. Donohue’s personal secretary.  He was very impressed that you took the time to write a response to our survey, and he wanted me to write and thank you, and say how he’s going to try to do what you suggest,” or something to that effect.
A few days after that, Dr. Donohue wrote a glowing review of The Prince of Egypt.  

As Mother Angelica says in one of the opening sequences that have been merged into one in the reruns of the past 13 years, “The essence of evangelization is to tell everybody ‘Jesus loves you.'”  There is a reason why people who hate Christianity think we’re all the same as Westboro Baptist: because sometimes we act like that.  When all we say is what’s wrong with the world, and I know I have often come off that way, to my shame, we look like we’re hiding an inner thought that “God hates everybody”–and maybe we are.

Someone was recently listing the Cardinal Newman Society with “Church Militant TV” (aka “Real Catholic TV,” aka Michael Voris).  The difference is that a) the Newman Society is an actual organization and not just one podcaster with a professional studio, and b) the Newman Society doesn’t just go around attacking Catholic colleges that aren’t living up to the faith.  It also helps students, provides campus ministry support, and praises colleges that are doing it right.

That’s what Vatican II was trying to say, and really what we’ve been reminded over and over, from the Gospel itself to Pope Francis, including by St. Francis de Sales, who is credited with coining the proverb “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”