Africans in Uganda are pleading for rich, powerful, and liberal Western entities to quit pushing their disastrous pro-condom, pro-”sex with anyone” agenda on them, because it is causing AIDS to increase.

The Family Research Council:

Rep. Henry Waxman’s (D-Calif.) opposition to abstinence may resonate with liberal leaders, but it isn’t winning over many African converts. The California congressman, who, for seven years, has claimed that condoms are the most effective method for curbing disease, has finally met his match in Uganda, where the head of the country’s National AIDS Prevention Committee is calling on Americans to “let his people go” and allow Africans to prevent AIDS with what works — namely, abstinence.

Ugandan Sam Ruteikara in the Washington Post today:

In the late 1980s, before international experts arrived to tell us we had it all “wrong,” we in Uganda devised a practical campaign to prevent the spread of HIV. We recognized that population-wide AIDS epidemics in Africa were driven by people having sex with more than one regular partner. Therefore, we urged people to be faithful. Our campaign was called ABC (Abstain, or Be Faithful, or use Condoms), but our main message was: Stick to one partner. We promoted condoms only as a last resort.

Because we knew what to do in our country, we succeeded. The proportion of Ugandans infected with HIV plunged from 21 percent in 1991 to 6 percent in 2002. But international AIDS experts who came to Uganda said we were wrong to try to limit people’s sexual freedom. Worse, they had the financial power to force their casual-sex agendas upon us.

My mother is not supposed to be diagnosed with an incurable disease. She’s not supposed to need a feeding tube and device to assist her speech. Not my mother. She’s supposed to live to 90 years old and meet each of my (future) children and sit at the head of the table for every Christmas meal.

But, apparently, it is happening to me. My mother was diagnosed, as we feared, with Progressive Bulbar Palsy, at the Phoenix Mayo Clinic last week. I’d never even heard of the disease until May, when my parents’ research regarding my mother’s symptoms listed Bulbar Palsy as a possible match.

Her excellent doctors at Mayo confirmed my parents’ suspicions, but, happily, reassured her that she is still in the initial stages, which means that she might have 2-3 years left with us on earth. There are also various measures she can take to increase her comfort. We’ll just have to wait and see what lies ahead in the goodness of Christ.

I’m home to my beloved. And, my house. And, my chickens and bees and garden and flowers. And, my pillow with just the right amount of firmness. All my cupboards are packed according to my logic. The thermostat is set according to my (and Devin’s) comfort. Aah, the comforts of home.

There’s no doubt that I’m a creature of habit. My sister, Courtney, reminded me of this during my NM visit–and I chose not to take it as criticism. Because, it’s true. I’ve used the same lip gloss brand, Neutrogena, for 8 years and can eat the same thing for breakfast every day of the week. With this in mind, I was challenged by the uncertainty of my time with my family; by “uncertainty”, I mean lack of routine and familiar comforts.

With that said, of course, my time visiting my family was a treat. I particularly enjoyed getting to know my young nieces and nephews better–Ava and Addison-2+, Adam-2+, and Nathan-5, as well as visiting with my parents and siblings. My youngest brother, Ben, an incoming senior in high school, was more chatty than he’s ever been. I, also, especially enjoyed the view of the lovely Sandia Mts. every day and the lovely temperatures, with mid 80’s to low 90’s during the day and 70’s at night.

Welcome home, to me.

So said Senator Obama in his Father’s Day speech. And I totally agree, both on this point and on his broader message that Black fathers who have abandoned their parental responsibilities need to truly be fathers to their children.

But if fatherhood begins at conception, doesn’t that mean that the baby’s life begins at conception? Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council made a video asking this same question:

http://www.youtube.com/v/OCm8a5e47Kw&hl=en

In Regnum Christi, we each draw up a Program of Life, which is kind of like our plan for growing in Christ, overcoming our faults, and strengthening our virtues.

I just created mine a few weeks ago and brought it to my spiritual director, a Legionary priest, to discuss it. In the Program of Life, you list what your “root sin” is: Pride, Vanity, or Sensuality. These correspond to St. John’s list in one of his letters of the common faults in all men. All people have these faults to some degree, but usually one is most prominent.

The totally awesome thing was that as Fr. Paul and I talked about my Program of Life and specifically what I thought was my root sin, he discovered by asking me good questions that my root sin was actually a different one! I was surprised because I like to think I “know myself” pretty well. So much for that notion!

Regnum Christi calls us to examine our life each morning with regard to our Program of Life, which includes the identification and practice of an opposite virtue to the root sin. In this way, we are on guard against the situations in which we most commonly fall to temptation (maybe it is being charitable to a harsh coworker or a trying family member, etc.).

In business, we formulate elaborate, detailed plans for how we will succeed in creating a product, marketing it, and selling it; in personal life, we set goals and work towards them, whether it be losing weight, running a marathon, or landscaping the yard, but in our spiritual life, we often just “wing it”, going along as best we can, sometimes forward, sometimes back, sometimes sideways.

Doesn’t it make sense to formulate a sound plan for attacking the faults that hurt ourselves, others, and our Lord and for growing in holiness, something that will affect our life both here and in eternity?

May Christ’s Kingdom come!

Fides et Ratio: Faith and Reason.

Don’t be impressed that I know Latin because I don’t; however, the Latin I do know is from the fact that the encyclicals and letters of the Popes have Latin titles. Fides et Ratio is an excellent one where Pope John Paul II explored the relationship between faith and reason in religion, philosophy, and society.

This post is in response to the recent flap between Dr. James Dobson, a prominent Evangelical, and Senator Obama, where Dr. Dobson criticized Senator Obama’s remarks about the Bible and how Christian faith should or should not affect the laws of our country.

A few years ago Sen. Obama spoke to a liberal Christian group, referenced some Old Testament Hebrew laws (don’t eat shellfish, etc.) to make the point that using the Bible to guide law-making doesn’t make sense. He also pointed out that even if we were all Christians, would we teach Dr. Dobson’s Christianity or Al Sharpton’s in schools?

He said that religious persons must frame their arguments in ways accessible to all people. That is very true! However, that doesn’t mean that arguments involving faith and theology should be excluded from the discussion.

Most of Senator Obama’s characterizations here are straw-man arguments. Dr. Dobson rightly critiqued him for making these statements, but the reasoning he gave for why Sen. Obama’s arguments are wrong were not the best ones.

No one is talking about teaching the Christian faith in public schools (that’s one straw-man). Further, the Christian faith and its theology have developed over the centuries in the Church: Senator Obama would do well to pick up a Catechism of the Catholic Church and read the moral law spelled out clearly; he won’t see anything about shellfish; he will see that slavery is condemned, and then he should ask himself how it was that a religion came to such reasonable moral teachings.

He will also see how faith and reason both have parts to play, for example, from Fides et Ratio (52):

If the Magisterium has spoken out more frequently since the middle of the last century, it is because in that period not a few Catholics felt it their duty to counter various streams of modern thought with a philosophy of their own. At this point, the Magisterium of the Church was obliged to be vigilant lest these philosophies developed in ways which were themselves erroneous and negative.

The censures were delivered even-handedly: on the one hand, fideism (59) and radical traditionalism,(60) for their distrust of reason’s natural capacities, and, on the other, rationalism (61) and ontologism (62) because they attributed to natural reason a knowledge which only the light of faith could confer.

The positive elements of this debate were assembled in the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, in which for the first time an Ecumenical Council—in this case, the First Vatican Council—pronounced solemnly on the relationship between reason and faith. The teaching contained in this document strongly and positively marked the philosophical research of many believers and remains today a standard reference-point for correct and coherent Christian thinking in this regard.

Pope John Paul Ii denounces fideism, adherence to a faith without engaging one’s God-given reasoning ability. We see modern examples of fideism in radical Muslims who murder innocent people and themselves for the promise of an eternity of carnal pleasure in Heaven (no doubt many have this motivation and others (hatred, money, etc.), but I think this promise is a big part of their actions).

At the same time, rationalism is condemned as well, attempting to rely on reason alone to discern the truth of all things.

JPII continued:

Against all forms of rationalism, then, there was a need to affirm the distinction between the mysteries of faith and the findings of philosophy, and the transcendence and precedence of the mysteries of faith over the findings of philosophy.

Against the temptations of fideism, however, it was necessary to stress the unity of truth and thus the positive contribution which rational knowledge can and must make to faith’s knowledge: “Even if faith is superior to reason there can never be a true divergence between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals the mysteries and bestows the gift of faith has also placed in the human spirit the light of reason. This God could not deny himself, nor could the truth ever contradict the truth”.(65)

I would love to hear an intelligent discussion between Senator Obama and Dr. Dobson (or maybe George Weigel or Archbishop Burke or Chaput) on the topic of faith and reason.

However, that discussion will probably never happen. Why not? Well, we as Americans like sound bites, and quick repartees, catchy slogans, and short, funny remarks. Also, I am not sure that Senator Obama has the philosophical education to discuss this matter, in spite of obtaining a political science degree from Columbia and a law degree from Harvard. Unfortunately, I think the education he received did not contain much on the natural law, which is the law written on every human heart, nor on how faith and reason complement each other perfectly.

Dr. Dobson also didn’t engage Senator Obama on the grounds of faith and reason, explaining how the two can and should be used in conjunction to discern the truth and make wise judgments. Instead, he attacked Obama’s understanding of Christian theology and the Bible.

Even though Dr. Dobson is correct in criticizing Obama’s vague and erroneous references to the Bible, which show his beliefs are against the Christian faith taught by the apostles and transmitted faithfully in the Church, it would be much better if he brought up the arguments against Obama’s positions on the family, abortion, same-sex unions, and stem-cell research based on the natural law.

Fortunately, there is an resurgence in the number of schools teaching Thomistic philosophy (i.e. based on St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, etc.), bringing back the “Great Books” programs, where classics are read and discussed, and also people in churches and schools are discovering the philosophy of Pope John Paul II and his developments on the personalistic norm, as well as his brilliant writings (Fides et Ratio, Veritatis Splendor, and so on).

When persons of faith are well formed in these important teachings, they become dynamos creating a more human, more just society. Let us pray that our country’s leaders, of all political parties, will learn these principles.

in Dallas, thanks be to God; this one did late-term abortions:

Members of the Catholic Pro-Life Committee, the Respect Life Ministry of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas, maintained a constant presence of peaceful prayer and sidewalk counseling in front of Aaron’s for over a decade.

They were the second group in the nation to undertake the 40 Days for Life campaign in 2004 that saw nearly 1,000 people from dozens of different churches participate.

“We are overjoyed to hear that this notorious place of death is finally closing,” Karen Garnett, executive director of the Catholic Pro-Life Committee, told LifeNews.com.

8 abortuaries down, 5 to go. Via Family Research Council.

I picked up our two Buff Orpington chickens from my friend, Jeremy, yesterday!

Here is the video of it:

Update: I’m getting some error and the video won’t play when I try to start it, so bear with me as I try to figure out what is wrong (you can never tell with computers…). In the meantime you can watch the video on my Google video page.

Second Update: It is working for me now; let me know if you run into problems.

Shortly afterwards, I did put them in the fenced-in run area, but Lobelia and Gertrude started pecking at the little ones, which was really hard to watch because the little ones were scared and trying to get away, so I took them out again and have set up a mini-coop for them to stay in until the chickens get used to each other more.

When I can devote a few hours to watching them, I will put them in the same area again and make sure the big chickens don’t hurt the little ones while working out their pecking order.

“If you can see the lights/
shine in front of me/
If you can see the lights/
shout out where you’ll be…”
– Simple Minds, “See the Lights”

That song has nothing to do with this blog post.

I blogged sometime back about Microsoft’s new technology, called Silverlight, that allows desktop-programming clods like me the ability to program web apps (like Gmail or Google Maps).

Adam Gretencord rightly let some air out of my sails with the current reality of web app programming, which Adobe does own, and the situation is the same today.

However, I am trying my hand at my first web game, a tower defense clone.  I have little imagination when it comes to inventing new game genres, so I am first trying to just copy an existing, relatively well-contained, game in the tower defense vein.

It is in “alpha” right now, which is a bombastic way of indicating I’m not even half-way done, but it is also much smaller than my (overly) ambitious real-time strategy game Crescendo, which I have put on indefinite hold while trying out this new technology.

Here is a screenshot of the game in its current state.:

Howdy friends,

I’ve been in NM for the past four days or so and away from the cpu.

Katie’s family here is doing great, and we have had a good time together; yesterday I set up a new blog for Katie’s mother!

Also, I used the very fun gift from Gerardo and Roxanna, The Dangerous Book for Boys, to make paper airplanes with my nephew Nathan, who is about 5 years old.  They were a big hit, and I ended up making about 7 of them for his little brother Adam and my twin nieces, Ava and Addi, who, though they didn’t really like to throw the planes much, still wanted one to hold.

Katie and I went to the Flying Star cafe, a hip eatery that is kind of like Jason’s Deli but with some more authentic local cuisine and style.  I ordered the New Mexico burger which came topped with green chiles.

Katie found out about a sustainable farm in Oregon run by an ex-software developer and his wife, via The Beginning Farmer.  There’s a video of their farm on the Beginning Farmer’s site; he talks about getting tired of working in a cubicle for 25 years (tell me about it ).

I return to Austin tomorrow and just have one week before my wife returns!