Brutally Honest

Meet Zach Sobiech... and be changed by that meeting

I didn't 'meet' him until early this morning when my sister-in-law made the introduction via Facebook.  I was mesmerized by what I hope you'll take the time to watch below... over 4 million others have done so:

As I watched the video, as I stopped numerous times to compose myself, as I marvelled at this young man's strength and the love he and his family shared, I couldn't help but wonder over and over again, what was the source of all this strength... and can my family and I also tap into it?

I believe firmly that I've found the answer:

For Laura Sobiech, the image of Mary is clear: standing silently, helplessly at the foot of the cross, watching her son die.

For Catholics, it's at the heart of understanding who Mary is and why she matters to our faith.

In Sobiech's case, it doesn't take much to conjure up the sight of the suffering mother of God. She just needs to sit at the foot of her son Zach's bed.

Zach is dying of a rare form of bone cancer called osteosarcoma. He is now in the final stages of the disease, at home in hospice care and taking only medications to help ease the pain and make him feel comfortable.

"Identifying with Mary's suffering has been huge," said Laura, of St. Michael in Stillwater. "To meditate from her point of view, watching her son suffer, has just really brought me peace and shown me how to do it. ... Mary was there for the whole thing, and there was nothing she could really do but be there."

Like Mary, Laura has resolved to be by her son's side for whatever time he has left. She is joined faithfully by her husband of 23 years, Rob. Together, both have shared the ups and downs, joys and deep sorrows of their son's battle with cancer, which began in the fall of 2009.

Zach, the third of the Sobiechs' four children, was out on a run trying to get in shape for the upcoming basketball season at Stillwater High School when he began experiencing pain in his hip. But when he sought treatment for what he thought was a hip flexor, Zach instead was told he had a tumor. 

Said Rob: "It was like someone punched you in the gut."

Not long after the diagnosis on Nov. 13, 2009, Laura got serious about a goal she had set several years earlier -- praying the rosary.

"When things started with Zach in 2009, it was pretty immediate that I needed that lifeline," Laura said. "That's when I decided that this was going to be part of my daily routine. So, I actually set up my work schedule to start later so that I could make sure I would get prayer in before I started my day."

Now Laura craves her daily time with the Blessed Mother as much as ever. Though a lifelong Catholic, only recently has she developed a devotion to Mary and the rosary.

"Any time we have a struggle in the family, I go right to the rosary because I know that's where we're going to get the grace -- or I'm going to get the grace -- to get through things," she said. "I just don't have to do it on my own. It's my safety net."

The safety net of faith is what has helped the whole family get through the dozen-plus surgeries, the 100-plus days in the hospital, and the grim reports from doctors. And, it has given them eyes to see Zach's illness as something more than just pure misery and heartbreak.

"We were given our situation as an opportunity," Rob said. "It's had purpose. It was part of God's plan. Now, every day I look at it, I'm going, 'I don't like it.' But, if you can understand that there's an eternal (component), then the whole suffering part makes a lot more sense."

We now know that this past Monday, Zach succumbed to the illness. His suffering ended, his family's entering a brand new phase but one that seemingly, they seem well equipped to deal with.

Might we all learn something from Zach's life and from the lives of those close to him and more importantly, from where they've drawn their strength.

Carry on.

"You are not what gives you a boner"

Rather provocative title I know, but if it gets you to read in its entirety what Marc Barnes, aka BadCatholic, has to say about the news hitting the wires of a Catholic priest coming out as gay, then it's worth the heat I might get for the decision to use it.

After all, this blog isn't called Brutally Honest for nothing.

Here's but a piece of some of the most enlightening writing describing Catholic teaching on this issue I believe I've ever read:

Bravely facing the applause of a world in love with labels, and just in time for the release of a second edition of his new book “Hidden Voices, Reflections of a Gay, Catholic Priest,” Fr. Gary M. Meier came out today and declared himself openly gay to the notoriously unsympathetic Huffington Post.

Bless the man, may the Lord keep him, let His face shine upon him and give him His peace. He’ll be attacked by idiotic Catholics, whose quotes will undoubtedly be used in his up-and-coming “This Has Been Difficult” op-ed. But the sins of hatred will hardly puncture his popularity. I am attacking — with trident and with fire  – his philosophy and his easy critique of Church teaching that will win the blank-eyed nods of every other person who doesn’t give a damn about reading what the Church actually teaches.  He says:

…that’s precisely the message our Church is sharing. LGBT youth are hearing that they are disordered, diseased, defective, damaged goods, wrong when they should be right.

If they are being give this message, it is not by the Church. The message the Church has been consistently giving to LGBTQ youth is the same message she gives to heterosexual youth — you are not your genitals. Stop introducing yourself with your penises.

We take offense at the Church when she says that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered,” (CCC 2357) but only because we put her words through the mind-numbing blender of reductionist thought which defines people as being their sexuality, as being heterosexual, being homosexual, being a lesbian, being pansexual, etc. The LGBTQ movement is so concerned with developing and refining their plethora of scientific labels by which to reduce human beings to a word describing their genital behavior that they — and the culture they own — have forgotten a very simple fact. You are not what gives you a boner.

It is by the urging of the Catholic Church that I refuse, reject, and trample on the label heterosexual. Why? Because I will not be defined as being attracted to women. My sexuality is personal, that is, it exists not as an abstract label generally unifying me with other people attracted to the opposite sex, but as an expression of my personal belonging to the bodily world, my personal integration of my soul and my body, which becomes “personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another” (CCC 2337), with a single, particular, personal, woman, not to a general sex.

But this is far too complex. We want a label to be subsumed into. And thus Meier, in claiming the label “gay,” says “I want the world to know the truth about who I am,” because personal identity has been wonderfully reduced, and we can say — without fear of contradiction — that who I am is gay, or who I am as straight.

This reduction is the primary reason Meier makes the tired, required leap from what the Church says — that homosexuality is disordered — to what he claims the Church says — “LGBT youth are hearing that they are disordered.”  Our culture defines individuals by their genital urges, and thus any rejection of a sexual behavior is immediately heard as a rejection of the individual. If who you are is a homosexual, then there is no distinction between being told “homosexuality is disordered” and “you are disordered.” While blurring this distinction and allowing ourselves to exist as walking erections certainly allows for easy, sure-fire, and oh-so-safe criticism of the Catholic Church, how small it renders the human person! What a piece of work becomes man, how lacking in depth, how easily negated, how boring and how bored!

You must read the whole thing.  Get over the giggles.  Get over the snickering.  Read the piece, the whole piece, then decide for yourself if you're learning something new about Catholicism.

Because if you already knew it, then you need to get about spreading the teaching.

And if you didn't, it's past time to get started.

It's about honesty, truth, integrity, freedom and in the end, the gospel.

It's not about boners.

Carry on.

"Because, it reminds me of surfing with my Dad..."

If you've not heard about Ricochet the service dog, please watch the following and enlighten yourself but understand that it is guaranteed to move you.

I watched it for the first time this morning, just before heading to the office.  Thankfully the trip was long enough for me to regain my composure.

Watch it.

Pass it on.

It's an incredible story.

"Our modern culture has gone a long way towards severing any connection between the living and the dead"

On a government installation near my office sits a graveyard that dates back to the mid 1800s.  I play on a softball field adjacent to the cemetary and checked it out just last week before a game.  It's fenced off and so you can't walk amongst the headstones and grave markers but from the fence you can read a few of the inscriptions.  

On one of those markers, the names of 3 children are engraved, their ages listed as 1, 3 and 5 years old respectively, incompletely telling a tragic and heartbreaking story of young lives lost and the lives of those left behind to bury them.

This morning I came across this related piece by tiberjudy that reminded me of that pre-softball game visit to the old cemetary and the connections to the past we're missing out on today:

Back in the days when cemeteries were grand and beautiful, the living and the dead were much more connected than they are in our modern world. People were born at home and many babies died very young also at home. Families lived together with several generations under the same roof. If you were sick or injured you were treated at home where you’d either recover or die, surrounded by your family.  When you died, your body wasn’t whisked away to a funeral home. Your body was washed and dressed by family members and your wake and funeral was held, most likely, in the room where you died. Many families had burial plots on their own land. If not, the parish church always had a cemetery, usually adjacent to the church. You’d see it every time you went to Mass. You’d grow up helping to keep your family plot tended and you’d surely visit your family’s graves on birthdays and anniversaries. You knew where your kin were buried and they were still, in some ways, part of your family life. You visited them and took them flowers. As you helped pull the weeds from their graves you’d hear stories about the deceased person and these would keep their memory alive. Today’s sterile, drive-through “gardens” are rarely near the parish church. The staff there mow the grassy expanse so there’s no need for family upkeep. Without monuments or statues it’s often difficult to locate a loved one’s grave. Great for mowing but bad for encouraging family visits and reflection. Many modern cemeteries don’t allow flowers to be left on the gravesite. Dying in a sterile hospital and buried in an easy-mow plot, our dead are pretty removed from our daily lives.

Catholics believe in something called the “communion of saints.”  That means we believe that those who have died in God’s friendship are part of the same mystical Body of Christ as those of us alive on earth. If your church proclaims the Apostle’s Creed, then you believe this, too. Thus the faithful departed remain alive in Christ, just as we are. In short, we’re all in this together. Our modern culture has gone a long way towards severing any connection between the living and the dead. We hide the process of dying and we bury our dead in endless rows of unadorned identical plots. Gone are the beautiful statues of weeping angels or praying cherubs. There are no more poetic epitaphs remembering the life and loves of the deceased person. When was the last time you made a family visit to put flowers on your grandmother’s grave?  Do your children even know where your grandmother is buried?

Practically speaking, few families today could afford a lavish family tomb in one of the few grand old cemeteries that still survive. It’s even unusual to find a parish church that still has its own cemetery. And with families living all around the country, it’s hard to make frequent visits to family plots. But we can do a few things to recapture that sense of communion with our deceased family members. We can include them in our family prayers at mealtime and at bedtime. We can remember the anniversary of their death with a memorial Mass or donation to the parish in their name. We can share photographs and stories about them with our children and grandchildren. We could plant a special garden in their honor and include their favorite flowers or shrubs. The important thing is for us to teach our family that our faith in Christ makes us all members of His family and that dying doesn’t separate us from one another. Our faith connects us to one another through the love, mercy, and sacrifice of Jesus. Nothing, not even death, can separate us from His love.

          “Our dead are among the invisible, not among the absent.”
                                                     —Blessed Pope John XXIII

Beautiful piece.  And yet another reason I find my embrace of the Catholic Church so rewarding.

Tiberjudy by the way deserves to be a regular stop on your blogospheric rounds.

"An element of madness" that is "healthy" and "spiritual"

Pope Francis is suggesting that I might just be blessing the Lord:

The Pope told Christians it is better to be “annoying” and “a nuisance” than lukewarm in proclaiming Jesus Christ.

“If we annoy people, blessed be the Lord,” said Pope Francis during his morning Mass at the Vatican on May 16.

“We can ask the Holy Spirit to give us all this apostolic fervor and to give us the grace to be annoying when things are too quiet in the Church,” he said at the chapel of the Saint Martha residence, where he lives.

...

The Pope preached on today’s first reading from Acts 22 and contrasted “backseat Christians” with those who have apostolic zeal.

“There are those who are well mannered, who do everything well, but are unable to bring people to the Church through proclamation and apostolic zeal,” he stated.

The pontiff said apostolic zeal “implies an element of madness,” which he labeled as “healthy” and “spiritual.”

He added that it “can only be understood in an atmosphere of love” and that it is not an “enthusiasm for power and possession.”

Pope Francis also dwelt on St. Paul’s actions in the reading from Acts.

“Paul, in preaching of the Lord, was a nuisance, but he had deep within him that most Christian of attitudes, apostolic zeal,” he stated.

“He was not a man of compromise, no!” he exclaimed. “The truth, forward! The proclamation of Jesus Christ, forward!”

The Pope noted that St. Paul’s fate was one “with many crosses, but he keeps going, he looks to the Lord and keeps going.”

“He is a man who, with his preaching, his work, his attitude irritates others, because testifying to Jesus Christ and the proclamation of Jesus Christ makes us uncomfortable.

“It threatens our comfort zones, even Christian comfort zones, right?” he asked the congregation. “It irritates us.”

Pope Francis underscored that the Lord “always wants us to move forward, forward, forward, not to take refuge in a quiet life or in cozy structures.”

Saint Paul’s apostolic zeal, he observed, comes from knowing Jesus Christ.

Paul did not find and encounter Jesus Christ with an intellectual or scientific knowledge, but with “that first knowledge of the heart and of a personal encounter.”

According to the Pope, St. Paul was a “fiery” individual who was always in trouble, “not in trouble for troubles’ sake, but for Jesus” because “proclaiming Jesus is the consequence.”

“The Church has so much need of this, not only in distant lands, in the young churches, among people who do not know Jesus Christ, but here in the cities, in our cities, they need this proclamation of Jesus Christ,” Pope Francis stressed.

“So let us ask the Holy Spirit for this grace of apostolic zeal, let’s be Christians with apostolic zeal, onwards, as the Lord says to Paul, take courage!” he exclaimed.

Blessed be the annoyers, for they will bless God!

"By suggesting he is uncomfortable with the moral dimensions of capitalism, Pope Francis has created a mini-furor..."

Via Frank Weathers, I learn that the Pope has ruffled the feathers at Forbes with the following tweet:

My thoughts turn to all who are unemployed, often as a result of a self-centred mindset bent on profit at any cost.

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) May 2, 2013

Here's a portion of what was written by Jens F. Laurson and George Pieler:

By suggesting he is uncomfortable with the moral dimensions of capitalism, Pope Francis has created a mini-furor among both free market types who are offended, and neo-socialists seeking support from the most powerful spiritual leader in Christianity. But would it be better, if popes refrained from interceding on such highly-charged secular matters?

No, but perhaps they should better explain what they mean. Admittedly it’s hard to avoid ambiguity in Twitter’s 140 characters. Even so, the short-hand version of the Pope’s critique suggesting, as it did, that profit-seeking drives unemployment, is at best a caricature of the zero-sum anti-capitalist creed. It boils down to: profit-driven companies make more money if they have fewer workers and thus lower labor costs (our spin, not the Pope’s). The implication is that the drive for profits must be tempered by social concerns like the well-being of workers, communities, and nations. Make a little less money in profits, give someone a ‘living wage’ that keeps them out of poverty and ensures social peace.

Part of this is just a truism (no one lives by profits alone, and modern corporations spend lots of cash persuading the public how much they are ‘giving back’ in terms of charitable works, philanthropic donations, and public-spirited workplace practices (recycling, childcare, low carbon emissions, and so forth). That same cash, of course, could be deployed to creating more jobs as the Pope suggests. But we digress.

Wholly missing from the papal argument is the fact that business expansion, and the attraction of investment therein, is based on profits. Greater profits don’t necessarily guarantee more jobs in existing business and businesses of the future, but you can’t expect those jobs to materializeabsent profit.  Profit isn’t what drives poverty, profit is what overcomes poverty. The argument is easier to make where profits are invested in medical advances that can save lives and increased productivity that will make further inroads in steadily decreasing world hunger. Or where investment and experimentation made possible entire new fields of human endeavor we can’t possibly foresee (personal computing, remote health monitoring…). But the argument holds just the same if profits were to go to seemingly frivolous smart phone apps or dividends. The short of the matter is that capitalism is the engine of the general betterment of the human condition and profits its essential tool.

...

Most recently Pope Francis has returned to tweeting on core religious issues. “I have come that they may have life and have it in abundance, says Jesus.  This is where true wealth is found, not in material things!” This is not an issue of economics, but a matter of the soul. A topic squarely in the realm of Francis’ expertise.

Actually Misters Lauerson and Pieler, Pope Francis speaks within the realm of of his expertise, with matters of the soul and, to your apparent chagrin, with matters of mammon.

From the Catechism comes that which clearly buttresses, supports and gives credence to the Pope's tweet:

2432 Those responsible for business enterprises are responsible to society for the economic and ecological effects of their operations.²¹⁸ They have an obligation to consider the good of persons and not only the increase of profits. Profits are necessary, however. They make possible the investments that ensure the future of a business and they guarantee employment.

2433 Access to employment and to professions must be open to all without unjust discrimination: men and women, healthy and disabled, natives and immigrants.²¹⁹ For its part society should, according to circumstances, help citizens find work and employment.²²⁰

2434 A just wage is the legitimate fruit of work. To refuse or withhold it can be a grave injustice.²²¹ In determining fair pay both the needs and the contributions of each person must be taken into account. "Remuneration for work should guarantee man the opportunity to provide a dignified livelihood for himself and his family on the material, social, cultural and spiritual level, taking into account the role and the productivity of each, the state of the business, and the common good."²²² Agreement between the parties is not sufficient to justify morally the amount to be received in wages.

2435 Recourse to a strike is morally legitimate when it cannot be avoided, or at least when it is necessary to obtain a proportionate benefit. It becomes morally unacceptable when accompanied by violence, or when objectives are included that are not directly linked to working conditions or are contrary to the common good.

2436 It is unjust not to pay the social security contributions required by legitimate authority.

Unemployment almost always wounds its victim's dignity and threatens the equilibrium of his life. Besides the harm done to him personally, it entails many risks for his family.²²³

I don't know whether the Forbes fellers are Catholic and if they are not, then they have an excuse but if they are, the sooner they each understand that the Catholic faith, and her doctrines and dogmas, cannot be compartmentalized and held in isolation, the better off they'll be and the more thoughtful perhaps they'll become.

I've come to learn, and am still learning, that Catholic thinking encompasses all that makes up life... and living that life well and with purpose.

It is why I'm striving to embrace Catholicism fully, even... and in fact especially, when it appears to rub up against some thought or process or idea I've long held as gospel.

It's that which I've come to believe makes a catholic Catholic.

Carry on.

Nicely done Publix, so very nicely done

A Mother's day gift from a grocery chain... perhaps poignant enough to piss off a pro-abort or two:

Via The Anchoress.

Just when we become cynical about humanity

Far too often, we're shown examples of or see for ourselves that which leaves us shaking our heads.   Here's something that might just leave you dabbing your eyes with tissue.

Via Gerard Vanderleun, proof that good abounds:

Excellent stuff.

Pass it on.

I guarantee there's someone out there who really needs to see this and who knows, perhaps it'll inspire more of it.

"I knew we had the perfect name for her - Isabella Rose"

Michelle at Catholic Sistas has put up a post that leaves one in wonder.  It's beautifully written and compelling and will leave you pondering:

I was 8 weeks pregnant when I took my 4 children and went on a trip to Iowa.  I was going to visit a friend at her house and then travel down to Kansas City, Missouri to visit my in-laws.  It was a long trip traveling from Georgia to Iowa but I felt up to the task.  I loaded our children, kissed my husband, and we headed off on first leg of our journey. Traveling alone with four children and being pregnant with the 5^thwas no easy task.  But, as we pulled into Billie Jo’s driveway I knew it was worth the effort.  We unloaded and settled in.

I can’t remember how long we had been there, perhaps only a day or two, but one evening I began to bleed.  I woke up Billie and told her I needed to go to the hospital.  She drove me there and after an exam the doctor handed me a plastic container and coldly said, “I can see tissue and I see blood, you are miscarrying.  Try to get us as much of the tissue as you can and bring it back to us.”  He also told me to stay off my feet for a couple days.  He left the room.  I cried.  Billie held my hand and cried with me.  She will never know how much her presence and love helped me.  She drove me back to her house and she tucked me into bed.

That night, crying alone, I got out my rosary and I began to pray.  I asked God to save my baby.  I pleaded that if He would let her live (and I only became convinced the baby was a girl as I was praying) that I would dedicate her to Him.  She was His and I would raise her for His glory.  In my desperation I asked God to send me a sign that she would be alright.  I asked that He send me one single rose.  I told no one of my prayer.

Several days had passed and I felt up to continuing on to Mike’s parents’ house in Kansas City.  Billie was worried and asked me to stay a little longer.  I assured her I would be ok.  We packed up and headed south to my in-laws.  I told them that I was supposed to stay off my feet because of the bleeding and probability of miscarrying the baby.  They were very helpful in making sure I could rest.  During my stay there I was scheduled to spend some time with my very best friend from high school.  She lived about 120 miles away and said she would drive to see me.  We had scheduled a day to go out to lunch.  She called and I told her what was going on.  She said she would come anyway and we could at least see each other.  My in-laws insisted that we still go out to lunch to have some quiet time to talk.

When Elizabeth rang the doorbell I got up to let her in.  As I opened the door I gasped.  I fought to keep the tears from trickling down my cheeks.  There my best friend stood with a single rose.  She said to me, “I know it seems weird for a girl to give a girl a rose but when I just kept hearing someone say, ‘Get her flowers’.  The ones I wanted were all gone but they had single roses.  I almost didn’t get one but something told me to get it.”  My heart skipped a beat and I told her thank you.  As we got in her car I told her that I had something to tell her.  Over lunch I relayed my entire story to her and told her that I had asked for a sign from God… a single rose.   I think she was as surprised as I was.  After lunch we went to her mother and told her what had happened too.  I knew from that moment my baby was going to live.

Don't stop there. The story doesn't stop there.  

Take a moment out of your busy-ness and read the rest.

Just do it.

You'll not regret it.

Mother Mary, pray for us.

"If you feel no danger, you very likely see no need for rescue"

There are many I know who've regularly decided to miss out on weekly Church attendance.  I find it heartbreaking for numerous reasons but perhaps the largest being the preparation for life's hardships that I firmly believe weekly, regular, attendance brings.  

I suspect that some are put off my insistence that Church beckons though I've yet to experience any real persecution or hatred over it, something likely to mean that I'm not trying hard enough to get them to come.

In this homily by Fr. Phillip Powell, he touches on the notion of Church as lifeboat and the refusal by too many to recognize their need for rescue:

If you feel no danger, you very likely see no need for rescue. Sitting comfy and cozy on your couch, reading a good book, you would probably dismiss a neighbor who barges in yelling, “I'm here to rescue you from your comfy, cozy couch!” If you were kneeling in prayer in church, confident that all was right with your spiritual life, the rantings of a crazy friar from the pulpit about sin and God's love would be distracting but hardly alarming. However, if your world were collapsing, if your family, your nation, your civilization, all that you have come to rely on were spinning out of control, and someone offered you a way to leave that world behind, the first thing you would need to do is admit that your world was coming apart. You would need to see the destruction, hear the system tearing at its seams, feel the angst and anger rising. In other words, you would have to confess that the world you helped to build and operate was losing its soul, spiraling into a dysfunctional waste. If you make this confession, then rescue is possible. If you refuse, if you deny the truth, rescue is impossible, and you will grow to hate those who offer you a way out. 

Christ's offer to rescue the world is an accusation. To say, “You need rescuing” is to say “You are in danger,” and I am in a position to help. The hardest part of being rescued is admitting that help is required. Why does the world hate Christ and his disciples? Because the Church sees the world in danger and knows that the only way to be rescued is to embrace Christ and leave that dangerous world behind. Leave behind contesting for social standing; compromising the truth to gain political influence; rutting with violence for the applause of mob; to leave behind self-righteous do-gooding, the easy hatred of imaginary enemies, and the lust for things and people. Christ's offer of rescue is an accusation, but it is also—if accepted—a vindication, a victory over the world, a win for those who would confess that they can only lose without God. No slave is greater than his master. If we are slaves of Christ, then we can expect nothing more from the world than he himself received. The rulers of this world fear another King, and they fear his followers. When the world stops hating the Church, we know that we have stopped preaching his Good News. Therefore, go out and frighten the world!

Lord, give us the courage to boldly step into the world's hatred and, with your help, rescue those willing to be rescued.

And give us the passionate persistence needed to love those who aren't quite ready yet.

Amen.