What's Missing from the Gay Marriage/transgender Dialogue

I just saw an episode of Eli Stone, in which a transgendered priest (Lutheran, I believe) put forth his/her arguments for why a sex change operation is morally justified.

-- She was in the wrong body for 30 years and needed a new one.

Of course everyone in the show who "had a heart" melted at the expressions of compassion and acceptance by the end of the episode. Unsurprisingly, completely missing is a single concept:

Natural Law.

It is natural law that God makes each of us exactly the way we are. Our eternal essence, who we are fundamentally, is not just our soul. When we find ourselves in heaven we will be the fulfillment of the same mind, same body, same soul (the belief that souls are superior/separate from our body and thus where our essence must reside, is rooted in a heresy from St. Augustine's day, Gnosticism/ Manichaeism).

So, a personal drawn to being transgendered must address that question. Did God truly make them wrong? Or do they have a heavy cross to bear for some reason we can not see? Transgender surgery is not a repair, it is a controlling change. I don't know the answers, but our public dialogue is far from complete without these questions being included.

Gay marriage. The Church teaches that marriage is only between a man and a woman, for a life time. Why? Simply biology. Puzzle pieces. Love and pro-creation are part of every marriage.

I can not begin to understand the cross gay people carry. Or transgendered folk bear.  I do know the burden of carrying my own cross of life disabled with TBI. I trust that God has gift in this cross and that when it is God's will for this cross to be removed (on either side of death's veil), I will gladly accept healing. And I'll look forward to discovering just exactly who God created me to be, and how these things that I don't understand will have imminent clarity.

Church teaching in these matters is clear. How people who are born with them are to bear their cross is an entirely poorly explored area.

What would Jesus Do?

Jesus warmly embraced and accepted people who were clearly sinners and then challenged them to "go forth and sin no more." (The woman at the well). This remains the Church's action as well, except that we sometimes overemphasize the "sin no more" part, and don't see (and or having it dismissed by the media and political agendas) the "embrace, accept" precursors inherent to individual ministry. Why? Because they happen individually, privately, pastorally. As they should.

Why the Heavy Pessimism about 2008?

As I glance through the headlines that pop up in my browser's home page a common thought has struck me: the world (or at least it's journalists) have yet to hear and embrace true hope -- hope in Jesus Christ. 

To read the headlines, 2008 was a dismal year. Too long. Full of war. Full of financial doom. All fretting over things that really only matter in light of Jesus Christ. And in that light, we have to ask ourselves how well we're doing upholding the dignity God gave us.

Jesus our Christ came to reveal to us our own God-given potential, our beauty, our dignity. And regardless of how well we're doing in that regard, the weight of any burdens we bear into 2009 is infinitesimal compared with the uplifting that running toward Christ brings us.

Come on, folks! Life is a pilgrim's journey. We are, at best, lodgers at inn beside the road toward our true home -- Jesus our Christ.

For this coming year, let's seek to find and serve Jesus in each person we meet. Then we will be like the wise men -- traveling far, sacrificing much, gaining eternal life.

New Year's Resolution: Lexio Divina

Yup. It's that time. Obligatory promises to self. The secular version of Lent. My challenge to myself each Lent, and thus round New Years as well, is to find a new way to Run Toward Christ.

I've made the commitment to create Lexio Divina video's in preparation for each Sunday's Mass. It's one way I try to run toward Christ. Whether you join me via video or do Lexio Divina with others or on your own -- it's a powerful way to Run Toward Christ!

My Lexio Divinas are posted here each week (feel free to follow the RSS).

What if HM used an iPhone?

Here's an article about yours truely exploring faith (a bit invisibly), technology, and overcoming brain injury. 

Where Hope is Found

Eucharist plants seeds,
Christ's Mass Grows within,
Prepare ye the way!

Eucharist plants the seeds of Christmas in our mind, our heart, our soul. How do we nurture the seed of Christ? What fruit will we eventually bring forth?

Eucharist plants seeds,
Christ's Mass Grows within,
Prepare ye the way!

Science Fiction and Salvation

Science Fiction is a powerful tool for exploring and understanding how we human collectively see ourselves.

"No," some might argue, "it's simply the result of a few minds and how they see the world."

Indeed. That's true of any given work. But, those that make it to the masses and become popular, have somehow spoken to people "en mass" and it has a lot to say about how we collectively see ourselves.

Jules Vern, Doyle, Asimov, Roddenberry, Lucas. These are among the minds that have asked us, collectively, to ponder our human potential and how we recognize and choose good and evil, God or Satan.

Of modern note are creations that in recent decades have become popular TV series. Star Trek, Babylon 5, Star Gate series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, Heros, Sanctuary.

There is a tendency among the modern sci-fi creations to be highly cynical. There is a distinct lack of hope. There is the premise that evil has won and survival equals victory. There is an underlying belief that humanity is doomed, and that being human means being irreprably connected with evil. This is an accurate and scary reality of the world without Jesus our Christ.

Mutations that are advancing humanity to our fuller potential and to greater potential for destruction abound. There is an awareness that humanity is called to more than we realize, but they very rarely point to God as the avenue for our salvation. 

Watching them, it can be easy to forget the through Jesus our Christ, we can rise up to fulfill a destiny far greater than we imagine -- the one God created us to be. It can be easy to forget we are each made in God's image, and if we can say "Yes!" to Christ being born within us, just as Mary did 2000 years ago, that God's grace gives up hope of living up to being fully human.

Bizarre and Artificial Rift Between Pro-Life and Social Justice “Camps”

This is the Enemy of human dignity clearly at work, dividing a house that should clearly be
united. There are errors on both sides, both of which boil down to not understanding our own
Catholic social teaching.

The battle against abortion is a clear moral “trump” issue. Without life, there is no opportunity
for human dignity here on earth. At the same time, our faith requires us to recognize Jesus our
Christ in every person and seek to help each person overcome the barriers between then and
equal opportunity.

One Body, In Christ

We can have both. We need to strive and struggle, together, toward both.
My prayer is that this model of Catholic social teaching can help move people beyond this evil
rift. We are one body. It’s time we started working like one, including that we realize we’re only one part and that other parts have other jobs and we work best when we realize we are one part, serving all parts.

Does Obama see the Evil around him?

It doesn't appear that Obama recognizes evil for what it is. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, he may have emerged from Chicago politics startlingly clean. If so, he clearly has an understanding of right from wrong in his own choices.

There are potentially many, many things that can be missed when we haven't cultivated the ability to recognize the Enemy's tail slithering in the background.

I pray I'm wrong. I pray for Obama and for his ability to recognize and combat evil, that we may truly be one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Human Dignity in One Lesson

In 1946 Henry Hazlitt wrote "Economics in One Lesson." It's a painfully simple book that cuts through a lot of confusion in economics. What is this one lesson? Turns out, it's one sentence:

"The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups." (p. 5)

Indeed, this is perhaps the simplest, most elegant way to describe the art of upholding human dignity.

Any policy, no matter how ill-conceived, can be shown to benefit some sub-group of people for some limited amount of time. But who does it harm? What are the medium and long term effects? How does it effect all people?

Proof of Concept:
Care for a non-economic example? I'll take a non-controvercial one (sardonic grin):

Abortion
In the little picture, abortion benefits a defined subset of the human population for a limited time. But doing so ignores that it harms everyone involved, plus society at large when we look at the big picture.

Resources for learning more:

Model of Catholic Social Teaching

Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church

Variety of books on Freedom and Economics

We are witnessing the slow death caused by subtle socialism

The Soviet Block used overt socialism to kill itself in 70 years. The US is using subtle socialism to accomplish the same thing over a longer timeframe.

Why does it take longer to kill a nation with subtle socialism than with overt socialism? Because the free market breathes new life into the infected nation, giving it strength to endure and last longer than otherwise.

I say this not based on economics. I say it based on the principles of human dignity. In the early 1900's the US began undermining human dignity by turning to the government to unnecessarily regulate the free market, undermining subsidiarity by hindering the ability of people to enter freely into contracts with each other.

It's now so common place we don't realize the government doesn't belong as a third wheel controlling how any free interaction takes place. The government sitting on each person's hand looks right to us. It's not.

If the government is involved, increased regulation is needed to keep the government in check while it regulates the interaction (otherwise, the government is tempted to become a player in a sandbox that's it's regulating). When abuse happens, we daftly trust the government to fix it by adding more regulation (brilliant deduction! I'm off to wipe the sardonic off my face) and instead of doing the right thing to uphold human dignity (remove regulation and government involvement), we add more of both, compounding the problem.

Now, we've given up on even the facade of subtle socialism and our government is deciding which companies get bailout finding (gee, no chance for further waste there!).

Unless we take drastic action to remove the insidious cancer of socialism from all aspects of government -- cutting it's role back to only the most basic and necessary functions to protect our population and define and uphold the rules of the free market -- our great nation will crumble under the weight of our own bungling weight, and human dignity will be squashed just as equally as it was under overt socialist USSR.