Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Looking towards Lent...


Okay, Catholics, you know what season is coming up in just a few days! Can you believe it's  that time already? Let's do this right.


If you have not yet signed up for Fr. Robert Barron's free daily Lenten reflections, click over there today, submit your email address (that's all!), and get ready for a fruitful Lent:




Also, I hope y'all don't mind, but I am going to repeat my Fulton Sheen Lenten series from last year, because frankly it was so inspirational for me that I need to see it all and read it all over again. The venerable archbishop is such a gift to our Church and the world; his words and reflections never get old but become more profound with each encounter. 

So, stay tuned for that (and some regular blog posts) as we approach the purifying desert of Lent, which I so desperately need and which I dread, simultaneously. 

I think a lot of you know just what I mean.

Ash Wednesday is next week, so be ready to fast and abstain with joy, my peeps! We're all in this together!




Sunday, February 23, 2014

Just Curious: Your pets

Well, after 723 comments on the last post (and counting), I am eschewing controversy for the moment by posting an innocuous "Just Curious"!




Dear Bubble readers,

Tell me about your pets! Do you have any? Do you want any? Names? Funny stories?

The Miller house is currently pet-free and is likely to stay that way. I grew up with tons of pets, from dogs and cats and birds, to rabbits and ducks and gerbils, to sheep and horses (we had baby sheep and horses born at our place -- so cool!). I was a 4-H girl, showing rabbits (French Lops) and sheep at the county fair.

That said, I am not an animal lover. (Oh, gosh… maybe this will get controversial? I am sorry! Don't hate me!)

We have had three beloved cats here in the Miller home at various points, and even a very long-lived fish (among other fish with lesser lifespans), but that was awhile ago now. We have enough kids that I cannot do animals at this time. My husband is happily in agreement there.

Nevertheless, I know that pets are an important part of many families, and I am interested to hear about yours!

Go!




Sunday, February 16, 2014

What is so wrong with women's bodies?


"Suppression of what is distinctly woman = oppression of women"
-- "LJP", (a really smart Bubble reader)


So there I was, sitting in the Great Clips waiting room as my 13-year-old son was getting a haircut. I started flipping through a Glamour magazine and was drawn in by a slick double-page ad for an implant contraceptive called Nexplanon.

A beautiful, smiling young woman beamed out from the page, with all her potential life plans laid out attractively: "get a job", "find my own place", "fall in love", "save up", "take a trip", "finish school" (strange how "get married" was not among the desired options, hmmm...).

http://www.nexplanon.com/en/consumer/
Considering the risks and side effects, why is this woman smiling?
Oh, wait, she's "not an actual patient".

Now, the cultural assumption is that all healthy young singles have lots of healthy sex of course, and Nexplanon reminds us that a healthy young woman would be wise to have a plastic stick full of synthetic hormones surgically implanted under her skin for three years so that her perfectly healthy female body is thrown into biological disarray through the release of chemicals into her system, purposely derailing her natural, healthy female functioning, so that she can live a full and happy and healthy female life.

Make sense?

And after her healthy female body is made to malfunction as planned, the young woman (who, remember, is not being treated for any sickness or pathology) may experience the following "frequent" and "common" side effects, according to the manufacturer:

Changes in menstrual bleeding patterns
Mood swings
Weight gain
Headache
Acne
Depressed mood
Vaginitis (inflammation of the vagina)
Breast pain
Viral infections such as sore throats or flu-like symptoms
Stomach pain
Painful periods
Mood swings, nervousness, or depressed mood
Back pain
Nausea
Dizziness
Pain
Pain at the site of insertion

Aaaaand, "This is not a complete list of possible side effects". Nice. Sounds great so far.

But to keep smiling and fulfilling her dreams, the chemically-altered woman must not only expect "side effects", but must take on actual "risks", which include:

Problems with Insertion and Removal (may require surgery)
Ectopic Pregnancy
Ovarian Cysts
Breast Cancer
Serious (deadly) Blood Clots
High blood pressure
Gallbladder problems
Rare cancerous or noncancerous liver tumors

You know, so that she can get her own place, fall in love, get a job, save, finish school, travel, and such. What a deal!

Staring at that Glamour magazine, I wondered as I often do, "What is so wrong with women's bodies?"

What have modern feminists done? Why have they turned on their own nature?

I flipped forward a few pages and yet another two-page contraception ad assaulted my eyeballs: ParaGard copper intrauterine device (IUD) with the tag line (I kid you not):


"Birth control that fits your life, naturally" 

...because apparently nothing says "natural" like a copper device being surgically forced all up into one's female parts! Foreign metal objects stuck into the womb are just what I envision to feel like a natural woman. Am I right, ladies?

A full and beautiful female existence is promised with this device, too, telegraphed via cutesy, artsy animated scenes of the good life. Whoops, but the usual nasty side effects, risks, and warnings have to be presented as well, in the fine print. I find the the sixth warning particularly appealing and empowering for today's young woman, don't you?
6. Perforation -- Partial or total perforation of the uterine wall or cervix may occur rarely during placement, although it may not be detected until later. Spontaneous migration has also been reported. If perforation does occur, remove ParaGard® promptly, since the copper can lead to intraperitoneal adhesions. Intestinal penetration, intestinal obstruction, and/or damage to adjacent organs may result if an IUD is left in the peritoneal cavity. Pre-operative imaging followed by laparoscopy or laparotomy is often required to remove an IUD from the peritoneal cavity.
What a "natural" fit!

Forgive me, dear reader, but what the hell is wrong with everyone? Feminists should be about affirming women, affirming all that is uniquely feminine, correct? And yet current feminist orthodoxy is all about the opposite, with its slavish worship of the contraceptive indicative of its disdain for the functioning female body. The very things that make us female are, in feminist eyes, the very things that block our human fulfillment.

If you disagree, then show me how and where I am wrong. I want to be wrong, truly.

Of course, this contempt for healthy female function goes further than just derailing the reproductive system with contraceptives. If the best attempts to impair a woman's biological processes don't work and a pregnancy occurs (i.e., if healthy bodily function continues), we must necessarily then advance to the killing of our offspring as the way to achieve our womanly goals.

Just listen to lead feminist Barack Obama; he'll tell you so. Last month, he celebrated the anniversary of Roe v. Wade as he has before, by affirming the necessity of women to access abortion, "[b]ecause this is a country where everyone deserves the same freedom and opportunities to fulfill their dreams."

See that? It's consistent with the whole philosophy. The very opportunity for women to fulfill their dreams hangs on their ability to negate what their female bodies do naturally. Contraception will mess up menstruation, ovulation, and conception, and as a necessary back-up, abortion will end gestation. Menstruation, ovulation, conception, gestation -- all those uniquely female things that hinder women's lives!

Which brings me back to the first quote up top:

"Suppression of what is distinctly woman = oppression of women"

I challenge secular feminists, pro-"choice" activists, and reproductive rights advocates to refute that statement if you can. How can you claim to champion women and to love women's bodies when you promote contraception and abortion, which are pitted directly against a woman's biology, which assault her very nature? I don't see men's groups fighting against all that is distinctly male, do you? So, what gives?

Why do you rebel against the functioning female body?

Why do you seek suppression of what is uniquely female?

What is so wrong with women's bodies the way they are?





Related links:

I HATE the Essure commercials

Your periods, your way

The Natural Family Planning post


Monday, February 10, 2014

Soooo…

There is nothing worse than staring at a blank blogger page. Wait, yes there is. Staring at a blank blogger page after spending an hour or two on blog posts that started out promising and went exactly nowhere.

So, I give up for now.

How about we just chat?

It would relieve me of the pressure to produce a full post with good grammar and pithy points and all, and it might be a lot of fun!

What are you guys up to? What's on your mind? I will happily jump into the comments (because they don't require editing and good composition, which take time and brain power that I don't have at this moment), so give me your thoughts, ideas, fears, hopes, dreams -- or even just throw out a good joke!

I've always thought that the best part of this blog is what happens in the combox, after all.


Okay, go!



Monday, February 3, 2014

Rolling Stone is ridiculous


Ooooooh, a must read! Damon Linker deftly smashes "journalistic" stupidity in his piece:



Rolling Stone's ignorant statements and Linker's responses begin:


1. "Against the absurd, impossibly baroque backdrop of the Vatican...Francis' election represents...'a scandal of normality.'"

Cardinals in red robes and silly hats, acres of marble, secretive conclaves capped by smoke signals — to non-Catholics there are many features of Catholicism that can seem odd, strange, out of touch with modern life, etc. But here's the thing: This could be said about almost any foreign institution or set of practices. And yet, journalists normally wouldn't freely denigrate a foreign institution or set of practices by calling them "absurd." Catholicism apparently belongs in a different category.

2. "After the disastrous papacy of Benedict, a staunch traditionalist who looked like he should be wearing a striped shirt with knife-fingered gloves and menacing teenagers in their nightmares..."

Let's pass over the fact that, strictly speaking, Pope Benedict XVI wasn't a Catholic "traditionalist," which has a specific meaning in the church, but rather a consistent and tireless defender of (a conservative interpretation of) Vatican II. Instead, let's ponder the spectacle of a journalist likening a head of state and the spiritual leader of about 1 billion people to Freddy Krueger. Not because he made a habit of terrorizing teenagers, mind you. But because of what he "looked like."

3. "By devoting much of his first major written teaching to a scathing critique of unchecked free-market capitalism, the pope revealed his own obsessions [as opposed to Benedict's] to be more in line with the boss' son."

So Francis is more Christ-like than the man who wrote a three-volume book about the life and teachings of Jesus? Maybe. But what this statement really reveals is a surprising degree of ignorance of the history of papal pronouncements about economics. Which brings us to…



Want the next six? Read the whole worthy piece, here.