Going to clean out my mailbox and share some recent wanderings with you. Some of it you’ve probably read on other blogs, but let me just get this done, okay?
Blogs you’ve called to my attention:
Evangelical Catholicism is a blog that might interest you
Rann at This, That and the Other Things, reviews books, including De-Coding MM
The Heart of Things from Philly-area Catholic teacher and speaker Bill Donaghy
True Choices for Women – this is a unique blog with posts about various Crisis Pregnancy Centers around the nation. (The posts are lengthy, informative Q & A with center personnel. Check it out!)
Podcasting Stuff:
You can vote in these Podcasting Awards, and Greg of the Rosary Army podcast says:
By the way, Three Catholic SQPN shows were nominated for the annual People’s Choice Podcast Awards at http://www.podcastawards.com . Considering all of the secular casts we’re running against, it would be outstanding if we can pull a couple wins out of this. Here are the nominated shows:
Best Mobile Podcast: Catholic Insider
Best General Podcast: Rosary Army
Best Religious/Inspirational Podcast: Daily Breakfast
Voting ends August 11.
Fr. Philip Powell, O.P is podcasting againg – and here’s Fr. Powell’s blog on which he posts the texts of his homilies.
Don’t forget the complete list of Catholic podcasts…which includes lots of interesting programs …this information overload is getting overwhelming. Too much good stuff out there. Who can keep up????
Christianity Today analyzes some data on the larger number of "larger" families and offers confessions of a "Six-Time Breeder"
So why do we have children at all? So much is against the whole enterprise. Children cost too much money. They cost too much of ourselves. Children undo us. They show us how much and how little we’re made of. They come, it often seems, only to break our hearts. And we let them. We invite it all. We admit perfect strangers through our doors and decide before we even know who they are to love them wildly, without condition, for as long as we live.
How do we account for this behavior? In the end, it is possible that our desire for children is a longing not to benefit ourselves, but to sacrifice ourselves; not to replicate ourselves, but to escape ourselves. For me, this longing hit at 28, while I was tunneling into the heart of the Congo on the back of an expedition truck. Suddenly, I was unutterably weary with my own small life and my endless requirements for fulfillment. I wanted the freedom to give my life away. I wanted an intimate, lifelong, indissoluble relationship with others, the kind of life that simultaneously sucks you dry and sustains you. I guessed that it would take nothing less than an infant to pry open my death-grip on self-determination. I did not know when we started our family a few years later that each birth would deliver into my arms an immeasurable weight of vulnerability and terror, but I guessed that parenting would bring a profligate, extravagant, others-centered life. As it has. But there has been a kind of death involved, make no mistake. "Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed," Jesus taught. "But if it dies, it produces many seeds." My ambitious dying life is far from over.
Jonathan Last explores the question:
In modern America a host of circumstances have combined to discourage family formation. Cultural forces have pushed the window for bearing children far past its biological optimal. Having children is more economically burdensome and less economically rewarding than it has ever been in the course of human history. We have reached a point where children are actually an impediment to economic and social success.
In short, modern American society has created – quite unintentionally – an anti-Darwinian system where reproduction is a hindrance to economic and social success. Those who thrive are almost by definition those who have few, or no, children.
Seen in this context, our plummeting fertility rate is an apparently rational response to our changing lives – and therefore is even more worrisome than it might seem at first blush. Our failing fertility is not a fad or fashion. It is the logical consequence of a culture that cannot hope to sustain itself.
Here’s an earlier piece Last wrote on the subject, highlight Philip Longman’s The Empty Cradle
Finally, ourr condolences to John Farrell on the death of his father:
My father, David J. Farrell, former Boston Globe political columnist and Boston Herald Traveler managing editor (and occasional contributor to this blog), passed away in his sleep on Friday morning, August 4th.
Funny thing was, just before my sister called me at 5:45 AM with the news, my little daughter had woken up from a bad dream. I put her back to sleep and lay down again: I was dreaming myself: my dad and my brothers all dressed up at dinner in what seemed like a fancy hotel restaurant. My dad turned to me and said, "John, where are the girls? Bring the girls down, too." I started to tell him that my two daughters were still asleep upstairs when I looked down and noticed that both were climbing into my lap.
Then I woke to the phone ringing and my sister who told me he had just passed away.
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