January 9: Saints, Stars and Sand

In our Devotional Guide readings for January, twice now, at the creation of Adam and Eve, and at the re-creation of the world after the Flood, God tells Man to "be fruitful and multiply." It seems God likes numbers, big numbers, such as the grains of "the sand on the seashore" and "the stars of heaven"--both of which represent big numbers and are used to indicate how much Abraham will be blessed in his descendants (Gen. 22:17) (Are we there yet?) The number of the heavenly hosts are probably countless, myriads upon myriads. God has lots of space (whatever that is) and time (ditto). Of course, the earth is finite, but according to revelation, an expansion project (many "mansions") is underway, and the finite earth currently only houses individuals briefly in their passing, like a vapor, a mist. So there's still plenty of room.

Today is the feast day for Peter II of Sebaste, who was the fourth son of St. Basil the Elder and St. Emmelia, brother of St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Basil the Great, and St. Macrina. What a family. And he was also the tenth and youngest child of this "family of saints." Mentioning ten children today brings dropped jaws, snickers, and rude comments. "Be fruitful and multiply" was originally a blessing, but turned into a imagined curse in the last century by the hopeless and the faithless. Governments are scrambling to get people to have children. Even Christians are writing new books like "Start Your Family":

couples are increasingly backing their way into parenting or missing it altogether. By the time the average couple tries to have kids, they are often beyond their late twenties and surprised to learn they’re sliding past the peak of fertile years.

In Start Your Family, Steve and Candice Watters encourage couples to be intentional about their timeline in the early years of marriage and trust God to help them boldly launch their families. Responding to the most common doubts and hurdles, they offer biblical inspiration for the questions, “Why have kids,” “When is the best time to start,” and “How can we fit kids into our lives?”

Those questions, had I heard them when I was a teenager, would have left me speechless. The question that was most common was, "When should we stop?" (or "Can we stop [having children] before childbearing years are over?) Now the question seems to be, "When should we start?" or worse: "Why bother?"

There are some things you can't sort of embrace halfway: either children are counted a blessing or not. Because we live in time, however, we can change from one year to the next. But childbearing does not com with an on-off switch.  Children are measured out now with pricetags on the them, weighed in a balance we call "our lives" to see if maybe one or two are found wanted. Abraham's spiritual descendants are content to play in a sandbox, very afraid of the seashore.

Comments

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

Saints, Stars, and Sand

Rather difficult when Abortion is legalized, promoted by its advocates, and enabled by liberal theologians and liberal politicians.

I just came across this most illuminating article by Anne Hendershott How Support for Abortion Became Kennedy Dogma and it's rather troubling. Excerpts:

"At a meeting at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Mass., on a hot summer day in 1964, the Kennedy family and its advisers and allies were coached by leading theologians and Catholic college professors on how to accept and promote abortion with a "clear conscience."

The former Jesuit priest Albert Jonsen, emeritus professor of ethics at the University of Washington, recalls the meeting in his book "The Birth of Bioethics" (Oxford, 2003). He writes about how he joined with the Rev. Joseph Fuchs, a Catholic moral theologian; the Rev. Robert Drinan, then dean of Boston College Law School; and three academic theologians, the Revs. Giles Milhaven, Richard McCormick and Charles Curran, to enable the Kennedy family to redefine support for abortion.

Mr. Jonsen writes that the Hyannisport colloquium was influenced by the position of another Jesuit, the Rev. John Courtney Murray, a position that "distinguished between the moral aspects of an issue and the feasibility of enacting legislation about that issue." It was the consensus at the Hyannisport conclave that Catholic politicians "might tolerate legislation that would permit abortion under certain circumstances if political efforts to repress this moral error led to greater perils to social peace and order."

Father Milhaven later recalled the Hyannisport meeting during a 1984 breakfast briefing of Catholics for a Free Choice: "The theologians worked for a day and a half among ourselves at a nearby hotel. In the evening we answered questions from the Kennedys and the Shrivers. Though the theologians disagreed on many a point, they all concurred on certain basics . . . and that was that a Catholic politician could in good conscience vote in favor of abortion."

By no means is this limited to the Catholic Church and its theologians and priests. Not only did many Catholics vote for staunch pro-abortionist Obama, but so did many mainline liberal protestants, young evangelicals, emergers, and muddle-headed protestants too who looked to the likes of Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo, and Donald Miller to enable the continued legality of abortion to continue unimpeded legislatively.

In short, conservative sanctity-of-life Christians must have the courage and conviction to confront their liberal abortion-enabling brethren over this Molech-sacrificing practice, a confrontation that some will label a civil war within the church body that some will see as judgmental, intolerant, unloving, divisive, mean-spirited, etc....

Sanctity-of-life Christians must resist these PC-attempts at bullying them to suppress their polemic, all in the name of civility and charity. Charity that enables life-killing vice is no virtue.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

I should also cite Hendershott's concluding remarks"

"Until the clerics begin to counter the pro-choice claims made by high-profile Catholics such as Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden and, now, Caroline Kennedy, faithful Catholics will continue to be bewildered by their pastoral silence."

The flock is looking to the undershepherds for guidance. They are getting it from the excellent organization "Priests for Life" but more is needed.

P.S. At least Catholic priests can deny communion, Protestants don't really have that disciplinary option. Yet when a Catholic priest did deny communion to his parishioners for supporting abortion via their vote for Obama, he was swiftly censured for doing so.

[labrialumn]

Tuad, we certainly do have that disciplinary option as well as all of Matthew 18.

We need to remember that "no murderer has eternal life in him" and stop giving false assurance to pro-abort "Christians"

[lee faber]

Mr. Kushiner,
Regarding your NYT on Calvinism post,
you criticized the NYT for using stereotypes, then used one yourself when you said:

"Edwards does not go further back to Occam and Scotus, but I think that their nominalism and voluntarism is the original Western source of the freedom of indifference."

what do you think nominalism and voluntarism are, and what do you think the relation between them and Scotus and Ockham is? Have you read either, or are you relying on the laughable historiography of the self-styled "Radical orthodoxy" movement? Only a few months ago Benedict XVI released a letter praising Scotus.

Also, saying that the will is disordered and the intellect darkened as a result of the fall is not the same as total depravity.

[GL]

Good post, Jim. And with the recession, it is now predicted that the total fertility rate in the U.S. will dip below 2.1, the nadir of the TFR during the depths of the Great Depression. What kind of people have we become when the high point of our fertility during the so-called boom years immediately preceding the current recession was the low point reached during the Great Depression. Financial insolvency may be the least of our worrisome forms of bankruptcy.