What to Do When Your Child is Denied Communion

January 5, 2015 By Jennifer Fitz

Here’s the story: Christmas morning at Mass we were doing really good, not getting fussy that the church was a tiny bit crowded, not complaining about the hymns (which were good, so that was easy), even thinking about Jesus and stuff. I received Communion. As I was walking back to my seat, I sensed a disturbance in the force. I glanced back, and there’s my kid, standing before the Blessed Sacrament, and she looks like she’s about to burst into tears. Not in a way that would impress the hagiographers.

I figured out the cause: Cuteness had trumped height + reverence, and someone mistook her for a non-communing child in need of a blessing. She stood politely through the blessing, but was waiting for Holy Communion, and it was not forthcoming.

And I wasn’t sure what to do.

Indeed, I was so surprised, and really too tired to think straight after having done Santa work the night before, that I felt sure that what I did do was totally wrong.

Over at CatholicMom.com today, I share the results of my inquiries to the experts after the fact, in my effort to find out how you’re supposed to handle these situations. It turns out I did more or less the right thing, other than the “being surprised” part, because this happens way more often than I knew. If you have a child who’s preparing for First Holy Communion this year, go take a look.

Defensa de la Eucaristia

Artwork by Lubiesque (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Diocese Pays for IVF, Does $2 Million Penance

December 27, 2014 By Jennifer Fitz

In my comments yesterday, I neglected to fully rake the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend over the coals. Let’s look at one more detail, as reported in The National Catholic Register:

According to court documents, Herx informed the school’s principal, Sandra Guffey, in March 2010 during the first round of treatment — part of which was paid for by the diocese’s health plan — and her contract was renewed.

Yes. A Catholic diocese’s health insurance plan covered IVF, a procedure that is immoral under any circumstance, and is usually carried out in a way that involves the direct killing of unwanted or leftover embryos. (“Embryo” meaning “teeny tiny innocent human beings.” The kind of people that Catholics absolutely don’t go about killing. Except if the diocese foots the bill, apparently.)

This was 2010. This was not some bureaucratic misfiling from the early days of IVF, when there might have been confusion over what the moral status of the procedure was, or whether it was covered by this or that provision of a health insurance contract.

Keep in mind that if you are a Catholic organization contracting for health insurance, checking that no immoral procedures or products are part of the coverage should have been routine for the last 40 years. You know, a checklist. This is not complicated, and it is not new.

Sackcloth and ashes, guys. This is no persecution against religious liberty. This is us paying for what we’ve begotten.

Image: Michelangelo Buonarroti – Frescoes above the altar wall, Sistine Chapel, via Wikimedia [Public Domain]

Catholic School Principal Learns $2 Million Catechism Lesson

December 26, 2014 By Jennifer Fitz

The IVF case that generated as much heat as light earlier this month has been decided, a jury determining that the Diocese of Fort Wayne – South Bend was indeed guilty of discriminating against a female employee in firing her for seeking IVF treatments. When I initially commented on this case, working only from a few anecdotes told from the plaintiff’s side, I wrote:

Terrible handling of the situation. There should have been no doubt, long before Ms. Herx ever began her job at St. Vincent’s, that IVF was right out. That this kind of moral teaching was sprung on a Catholic school teacher so late in the game is genuinely sinful. You have to wonder about the school and what it’s teaching the kids.

I did not realize until reading the article in the Register this afternoon just how bad things were:

The case is complicated by the fact that Herx was fired after her second round of IVF treatments. According to court documents, Herx informed the school’s principal, Sandra Guffey, in March 2010 during the first round of treatment — part of which was paid for by the diocese’s health plan — and her contract was renewed. Guffey registered no objections at the time, explaining during the trial that she had been unaware of the Church’s teaching on IVF, and only learned it reading a magazine a year later.

IVF is not a new procedure. Here’s what the Church had to say on the question in 1987:

Nevertheless, in conformity with the traditional doctrine relating to the goods of marriage and the dignity of the person, the Church remain opposed from the moral point of view to homologous ‘in vitro’ fertilization. Such fertilization is in itself illicit and in opposition to the dignity of procreation and of the conjugal union, even when everything is done to avoid the death of the human embryo.

It may indeed have taken a while for that ruling to trickle down to the average Catholic school principal. But the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1993 — with an index in the back — has this to say, which applies even to the most morally-restrained possible variation on IVF:

2377 Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable. They dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act. the act which brings the child into existence is no longer an act by which two persons give themselves to one another, but one that “entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person. Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children.”¹⁶⁷ “Under the moral aspect procreation is deprived of its proper perfection when it is not willed as the fruit of the conjugal act, that is to say, of the specific act of the spouses’ union …. Only respect for the link between the meanings of the conjugal act and respect for the unity of the human being make possible procreation in conformity with the dignity of the person.”¹⁶⁸

So you’re a Catholic school principal, and you don’t really know what’s in the Catechism? Or how to quick look up a tricky question when your staff come to you to discuss their situation? Or how to shoot an e-mail to your pastor and say, “Gee this Catechism is too hard for us, it has so many big words! Could you check it for us?”

Yeah, that’s the sound of me making fun. Because you know what? As a catechist, teaching for free an hour a week to a room full of ten-year-olds, I was expected to know the answers, know when I didn’t know the answers, and know how to get them and report back.

I stand 100% behind the teaching of the Catholic Church. But I think that if you’re going to draw some kind of moral line in the sand for your staff, it’s a matter of justice (not to mention prudence!) that you be clear and consistent on what those lines are. That you set forth your standards early and often, and not pull the rug out from under employees who took on their job in good faith, only to be given their little Catechism lesson years down the road.

Was the Diocese of Fort Wayne – South Bend guilty of discrimination against Ms. Herx? Well, it was guilty of something much, much worse: Utter neglect and failure in its mission to teach and proclaim the Catholic faith.

Note to bishops: Hire principals who can read a Catechism.

File:Aquinat.jpg — Did somebody call me? Because it seems like maybe your school could use some supernatural intervention.

Image by Sandro Botticelli [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Atheists Advise: Don’t Watch Just Anything, Be Discriminating to Safeguard Your Faith

December 17, 2014 By Jennifer Fitz

The Washington Times reports that American Atheists have figured out what Catholics have long proclaimed:

American Atheists unveiled Wednesday the “War on Christmas” line-up on its television channel, AtheistTV, featuring “original programs proclaiming the truth about Christmas on December 24 and December 25, featuring scholars and celebrities from the atheist community.”

“Christmas is hard for many atheists, so we will provide programming free from superstition and fairy tales that allows families to watch together and not worry about being preached at,” American Atheists President Dave Silverman said in a statement.

It turns out serious Atheists, like serious Christians, want to safeguard their faith — or lack thereof. As the Catechism observes:

1783 Conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened. A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator. The education of conscience is indispensable for human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings.

1784 The education of the conscience is a lifelong task. From the earliest years, it awakens the child to the knowledge and practice of the interior law recognized by conscience. Prudent education teaches virtue; it prevents or cures fear, selfishness and pride, resentment arising from guilt, and feelings of complacency, born of human weakness and faults. the education of the conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart.

1785 In the formation of conscience the Word of God is the light for our path,⁵⁴ we must assimilate it in faith and prayer and put it into practice.

And with regard to the media explicitly:

2496 The means of social communication (especially the mass media) can give rise to a certain passivity among users, making them less than vigilant consumers of what is said or shown. Users should practice moderation and discipline in their approach to the mass media. They will want to form enlightened and correct consciences the more easily to resist unwholesome influences.

Be careful what you let into your home. Think not only about who and what are influencing your children, but what kind of education you are giving yourself.

And if you were feeling self-conscious about doing that before, what with people telling you that prudence was really just you being “intolerant” or “close-minded”, now you can point to your friendly local Atheists and observe that you’re just using common sense.

Image by New York : Irving Berlin Inc., publisher. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Subtle Smackdown: Vatican Report on American Women Religious is a Warning for Every Parish and Diocese

December 16, 2014 By Jennifer Fitz

Don’t let the headlines fool you, the freshly-released Final Report on the Apostolic Visitation of Institutes of Women Religious in the United States of America, 16.12.2014 is anything but glowing praise. It’s charitable and mannerly, but if you read closely and put on your thinking cap, the findings are harrowing. All the more so because our religious orders don’t exist in some bubble; every sister comes from a Catholic parish, and every sister in turn bestows her vocation on the Church. What the Vatican is saying about our religious orders is nothing short of an indictment of American Catholicism.

You can find the friendly stuff yourself, and there’s plenty of it. Who doesn’t have something good to say about the work of our religious sisters, brothers, priests, deacons, and laity? We aren’t a complete loss. We manage to do a few things right.

But let’s take off the optimist-filter and look frankly at the bad news, which I will translate from Diplomatese into “your overbearing Catholic mother who doesn’t mince words.”

Today, the median age of apostolic women religious in the United States is in the mid-to-late 70s.

. . . Many sisters expressed great concern during the Apostolic Visitation for the continuation of their charism and mission, because of the numerical decline in their membership.

Is this what your parish looks like, too? If your church isn’t moribund (or based in a retirement community, which will skew the numbers), what percentage of your high school graduates have actively discerned a religious vocation? What percentage move on to college or secular work without ever giving serious thought to the possibility that they might have a calling to consecrated life?

Currently, a significant number of religious institutes are expending considerable spiritual and material energies in the area of vocation promotion. While some of these have since shown an increase in the number of candidates entering and remaining, for many other institutes the results are not commensurate with the expectations and efforts. Some institutes reported that they have suspended vocation efforts for a variety of reasons, the most common being the declining membership and the ever-widening age gap between their current members and potential candidates.

The lack of interest in vocations is a longstanding problem. What many religious orders have been doing for the last thirty to fifty years simply is not the kind of thing young Catholics for the last thirty to fifty years have desired to devote their life to. No amount of PR can change that.

Vocation and formation personnel interviewed noted that candidates often desire the experience of living in formative communities and many wish to be externally recognizable as consecrated women. This is a particular challenge in institutes whose current lifestyle does not emphasize these aspects of religious life.

It turns out that if you want to live just like everyone in the secular world, you don’t need a religious order to help you do that. Young people show up at Church seeking Christ, not a stained-glass variation on the Elks club.

Many formators conveyed to the Visitator that candidates often have extensive professional backgrounds but less prior theological and spiritual formation.

Even the kids who are turning out at the religious orders don’t know jack about their faith. Catechesis is in a major crisis.

We ask the religious institutes to evaluate their initial and ongoing formation programs, assuring that they provide a solid theological, human, cultural, spiritual and pastoral preparation which pays special attention to the harmonious integration of all of these various aspects (cf. Vita Consecrata, 65).

Some of you religious orders aren’t helping. Get it together.

This Congregation asks the members of each institute to evaluate their actual practice of liturgical and common prayer. We ask them to discern what measures need to be taken to further foster the sisters’ intimate relationship with Christ and a healthy communal spirituality based on the Church’s sacramental life and sacred Scripture.

Lex orandi lex credendi. Some of y’all aren’t even praying like you ought. Straighten up and fly right.

The Church is continually challenged to a fresh understanding and experience of this mystical encounter. However, caution is to be taken not to displace Christ from the center of creation and of our faith. Truly, the Word of God is the one through whom the cosmos is created and sustained in being since “all things have been created through him and for him, and he is before all things, and in him all things have their being (cf. Col. 1:16f).

This Dicastery calls upon all religious institutes to carefully review their spiritual practices and ministry to assure that these are in harmony with Catholic teaching about God, creation, the Incarnation and the Redemption.

Could be because you don’t even believe the Catholic faith anymore. You need to fix that.

This Dicastery is well aware that the Apostolic Visitation was met with apprehension and suspicion by some women religious. This resulted in a refusal, on the part of some institutes, to collaborate fully in the process.

Catholics don’t trust each other. We have serious internal divisions that no amount of singing of “Gather Us In” and “All Are Welcome” can fix.

The Vatican’s report on American women religious does enumerate the tremendous amount of good we manage to do anyway, and it’s worth a read for that reminder alone. But it also underscores our enormous discipleship problem, which feeds and is fed by massive rifts in the Church. Don’t believe the headlines. All is not well, not for any of us.

Image: Franz Ludwig Herrmann [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

100 Things to Do on Thanksgiving Instead of Shopping

November 25, 2014 By Jennifer Fitz

It is not necessary for other people to miss out on Thanksgiving so that you can be adequately amused. Just because the stores are open does not mean you have to go shopping. Here’s a list of alternate ways to entertain yourself on Thursday.

1. Visit with your friends or family.

2. Bake a pie.

3. Watch a movie.

4. Go for a walk.

5. Play Scrabble.

6. Serve Thanksgiving dinner to the homeless.

7. Build something with Legos.

8. Pray for someone you love.

9. Pray for someone you can’t stand.

10. Call your relatives.

11. Do your Christmas cards.

12. Rake your leaves.

13. Rake someone else’s leaves.

14. Blow the snow off the sidewalks to check for leaves.

15. Learn to use chopsticks.

16. Learn to make espresso.

17. Write a letter to the editor.

18. Read a book.

19. Write a book.

20. Box up all the books you aren’t ever going to finish to drop off at Goodwill in the morning.

21. Take a long hot bath.

22. Build a fire.

23. Roast marshmallows.

24. Learn to crochet.

25. Decorate the house with paper snowflakes.

26. Eat frozen pizza.

27. Check your oil.

28. Rearrange the furniture.

29. Speak only in Pig Latin.

30. Speak only in real Latin.

31. Get everything organized for tax time.

32. Write year-end donation checks to your favorite charities.

33. Play touch-football.

34. Play rugby.

35. Play Airsoft.

36. Go hunting. Or just make like a hunter and sit in a tree for a few hours.

37. Throw the Frisbee for your dog.

38. Repaint the bathroom.

39. Maybe just clean the bathroom.

40. Learn to play bridge.

41. Learn to play poker.

42. Learn to mix cocktails.

43. Learn how to saunter around in high heels.

44. Learn how to maintain a debonair expression while accepting a cocktail from the hostess sauntering around in high heels.

45. Take a pledge to never, ever, make green bean casserole again.

46. Repent. Work on your green bean casserole for next year.

47. Memorize the names and dates of the American presidents.

48. Memorize the names and dates of the French presidents.

49. Ask yourself: Who would want to date these guys?

50. Learn to sing a song that you like.

51. Learn to ignore the faces people make when you sing that song.

52. Visit your next door neighbors.

53. Leave before you’ve eaten all their pie.

54. Paint a picture.

55. Make a mosaic.

56. Make a piece of jewelry.

57. Make a no-sew clothing project.

58. Make a yes-sew clothing project.

59. Think of who you could give your project to who would actually wear it.

60. Resolve to meet more four-year-olds. They’ll wear anything, if you spin it right.

61. Figure out how to make your (non) sewing project appealing to a four-year-old.

62. Go pick up litter from that place where everyone throws their beer cans.

63. Go pick up litter in your living room, even it’s not beer cans.

64. Clean your oven.

65. Clean your neighbor’s oven.

66. Give yourself a reward if you can do #65 without offending your neighbor.

67. Sign up for a new social media platform and learn how to use it.

68. Delete a social media account and relish the freedom it gives you.

69. Play a video game that was wildly popular in 2012.

70. Play charades.

71. Play Twister.

72. Play the piano.

73. Do a puzzle.

74. Turn the puzzle over and do it blank-side up.

75. Make birthday cards for your friends and relatives for the next 12 months.

76. Go on a photo safari. Don’t take any pictures of yourself.

77. Go on a photo safari. Take pictures of yourself in 100 different places.

78. Go on a scavenger hunt.

79. Put that back. Reconfigure the scavenger hunt so that no crimes are committed, even if the police are all distracted managing the mob at mall.

80. Learn to play the recorder.

81. Join a support group for people whose family members kicked them out into the cold for playing the recorder.

82. Play croquet.

83. Play badminton.

84. Just put on the white pants, serve the cocktail, and call it good.

85. Sort your recycling.

86. Make something with modeling clay.

87. Organize your photo albums.

88. Put names and dates on all the photos of people you know perfectly well, but your great-grandchildren won’t.

89. Figure out how chemistry works.

90. Explain to someone else how chemistry works.

91. Do a chemistry experiment.

92. Completely clean the kitchen up again before your mother finds out.

93. Sort your M&M’s into colors and make a mosaic. If you used already M&M’s in #55, use Skittles this time.

94. Play with play-dough.

95. Quit feeding the dog play-dough. And clean up that mess.

96. Do the Virginia Reel.

97. Stay up late talking to your friends.

98. Organize a drum circle.

99. Disband the drum circle and apologize to the neighbors about the noise.

100. Go to bed, but not too early. If you really must, you can go shopping Friday morning at a respectable hour.

Image: August Macke [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Hating the Holidays as the Precursor to Happiness

November 24, 2014 By Jennifer Fitz

You’re supposed to be happy now, because it’s the holidays. The rest of the year, a civil disposition generally suffices. But for the next eight weeks, if you aren’t madly in love with every gift, every canape, every delightful holiday fete . . . you aren’t just an ungrateful wretch, you’re a menace to society.

There are Good Reasons to Hate the Holidays

The thing about the modern holiday season is that it’s come unmoored. We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, we celebrate Thanks-Getting — heaven help you if you show insufficient gratitude when showered with Pumpkin Spice Jalapeno Wasabi chips. People worked hard to deliver that taste sensation into your undeserving hands, and you must reciprocate by demonstrating your heartfelt pleasure at their craft or else you just don’t love them nor America either.

Then there’s Giftmas. The reason for the season is Love and Sharing: You must love every outward sign of cheer being inflicted upon you, and you must share a sufficient amount of your wealth, time, and capacity for making inane conversation in order to prove that you, too, are a true citizen.

With joy like this, what’s not to hate?

Holy Days are No Vacation

The unmooring arises from forgetting that “holidays” are meant to be holy days. Sacred.

Back when I was not a Christian, I rightly perceived the mad frenzy of forced-cheerfulness to be meaningless. An awful lot of shopping, noise, and admonitions to cheer-up already! when there was no obvious grounds for cheerfulness, unless you just really love a crockpot full of mini-sausages. Even Swedish meatballs and miniature quiches just can’t stand up to the crushing darkness in the world.

If the reason for the season is to observe just how good we’ve got it, then it’s not unreasonable to notice that things could be better. A warm sunny tropical island, alone with a good book, might be nice just now.

Seriously, kids, if your idea of hedonism is the office drop-in, you need to get out more. There are better pleasures, I assure you.

Sacred Work is Good Work, but It’s Work

I’m fortunate to run in circles where the work of observing the holy days is generally quite pleasurable. I like the people in my extended family, and I like spending time with them. I love that I can do so without traveling for days on end, only to spend a long rainy weekend sharing a basement floor with twenty of my closest kinsmen. I’ve got it good.

But what about my friends who undertake immense labor, expense, and misery in order to keep the holidays in suitable fashion?

Well, no reason to pretend they’re having fun at it. And it would perhaps be better if the sacred work didn’t have quite such a penitential feel to it. But they are doing something very, very good.

Joy is not about Pleasure

I’ve given birth enough times to be able to say two things with confidence:

There are few other things in life more worthwhile than bringing a new human being into this world.
Childbirth is not particularly fun.

If you want to know what pain is, go up to a woman in labor and tell her, “Quit being such a grouch! You’re having a baby! Smile!” She looks busy, but she’s not too busy to punch you in the nose.

The holy days are joyful because they are a good work. We are rendering our thanks to God. We gather with the people whom we share this world with, not because they are perfect people, but because they are the people we’ve been given. We shower others with kindness not because we expect anything in return, but because God has shown such kindness to us in creating us, in sustaining us, and in holding out the promise of eternal salvation.

Pumpkin Pie as a Foretaste of Heaven

When we talk about the “Joy of the Cross” we don’t assert that torturous execution is a walk in the park. What we mean is that God loves us so much He’s willing to do whatever it takes to restore to us that walk in the park that is our supernatural destiny. So we have a Christ who comes bringing both miraculous cures, sign of our eternal hope, and a promised cross — our path through this fallen world into the next.

Keep in mind that even the easy part of being Jesus Christ — fixing broken bodies, kissing babies, calming storms — came at a cost. If the Cross was unspeakable suffering, wandering Galilee was probably a fair match for what it’s like to stand in the kitchen cooking all day.

So where are the holidays on this divine spectrum? Sometimes that pie is like water from the well, like empty vessels miraculously filled with the best wine. Other times it’s like slipping through a crowd trying to push you off a cliff. When life is darkest, maybe it’s the spear in your side.

How hateful to tell someone that the best thing about the holidays is turkey and stuffing, cheer up already! No. The best thing about the holidays is that we get to participate in the divine work of goodness, even when the turkey is absolutely horrid.

Image: Joos de Momper (II) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons