Be Not Idle

…(H)e is a consciousness objector to his own conscience.

- Jeff Miller, aka The Curt Jester, on Sen. Joe Biden’s convoluted rationale for being Catholic who supports abortion 

I was reading about Palinsanity - a term coined by Althouse to describe the vicious attacks on Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. John McCain’s pick for vice-president. The Anchoress (see my blogroll) has a good round-up of stories and opinion.

Personally, I went from flabberghasted to incensed in less than a day. Yesterday I read the sick rumors that Gov. Palin’s youngest child was secretly her grandson (some people need to lay off the romance novels). Now that the Palin family has revealed their oldest daughter is pregnant - and therefore can’t be her brother’s mother - the pundits and opinionated cranks have a whole new bag. The gist of these comments seems to be that 1) because the youngest child has Down’s Syndrome, the Gov. needs to go home and be a mother; and 2) because the 17-year-old is pregnant and preparing to marry the father of the baby, the Gov. needs to go home and be a grandmother.  

Oh, irony!

This weekend I enjoyed visiting with my niece and her husband. They are happy about moving into their first home and are expecting their first child. And they’re 19.  Are they children? No.

Today after school, I ran into a former student who was married this spring. She’s expecting her first child this coming winter. She’s 16 and her husband is 24. Are they children? Heck, no!

The irony is that if Gov. Palin’s daughter had chosen to abort the baby, our society would consider her grown-up enough to make that choice. She needn’t have consulted with her mother, either. A 17-year-old is considered old enough to have sex and deal with the consequences on her own.  Parental consent laws are debated endlessly as a controversial limits on “choice”, aren’t they?

But when it comes to politics, suddenly the lip-service feminists (including the men) have become reactionaries who know that the governor’s ovaries dictate that she must step down.

Jeff Miller aka “The Curt Jester” has a post about women who were ordained as priests in a Protestant church - and insist they’re Catholic priests because they “remain faithful to the (Catholic) church”.  They’ve been excommunicated, of course, but they and their supports don’t “feel” the excommunication. 

Therefore, they’re not.

 This actually reminds me of an interesting anecdote that someone told me (and I have permission to share).  There was a married woman who started having an adulterous affair. Her husband and children were upset, of course, but even worse was the blithe way in which she wanted to incorporate her lover into their lives. Namely, she wanted her lover to move into the same home as her husband.

I know there are people (like NOW ex-president Patricia Ireland) who think that bigamy is fine if only people in the relationship are “open-minded”. However, the husband (and children) weren’t having it.

Her husband filed for a divorce. After it was finalized, the ex-wife continued to refer to herself as his wife.  She remarried. When he remarried, she showed up at the hotel where the ceremony took place - with her NEW husband - in order to object.

So that’s what I think of women who excommunicate themselves and then insist they’re in communion with the Church.  

Via the Curt Jester, a MySpace poll shows the Catholic Church is out of touch with young people. He writes:

Of course what most of these poll (sic) indicate is that people think that the Church is out of touch with the morality of the modern culture, that it is not an echo chamber for current societal ethics. The only thing the Church needs to be in touch with is the Holy Spirit.

If the Church were to bend with trends, it would be no use to anyone - least of all young people. The world is full of “rebels” who are easily swayed to follow trends or parrot conspiracy theories, or gossip about anti-celebrities (who are really just celebrities with anti-establishment reps). The easy way to get them to do what someone else wants? Make them think that someone, somewhere, is against them and they can rebel. (Advertisers took lessons from Satan, eh?)

My “baby” brother told me about a girl he met at college. He found her annoying because she looked down her nose at hicks, geeks, and the out-of-touch. At a party, she went on about a tattoo she really, really wanted to get. He asked her why getting a tattoo was so important.

“I want to be different,” she said, “like everybody else.”

Then she got angry when he laughed his butt off.

http://www.splendoroftruth.com/curtjester/archives/2008/07/o ut-of-touch.php

There was an interesting, albeit depressing, conversation over lunch.

An involved, caring mother says that if her son wants to have sex, she and her husband are going to make sure he is “safe”. In other words, they’re going to make sure he has condoms. He’s not even 16, the legal age of consent. 

Since her husband Mr. Safety scoffs at ”religious ideals” (aka sexual morality), I did the only thing I could do. I asked Mrs. Safety if they had mentioned their decision regarding condoms to the parents of the boy’s friends, especially his female friends.  She seemed a bit flabbergasted, so I remarked that the oldest of the three girls he hangs out with isn’t even 14. 

“He’s not going to sleep with a 13-year-old!” she said.

“Why not?’ I asked. “She has a crush on him and he likes her.” I didn’t mention that one 12-year-old girl could pass as a high school student. I think I’d given her food for thought; no need to choke her by feeding her too fast.

I’ve never understood the mentality of “They’re gonna do it anyway.” Having been a teenager once and teaching teenagers now, I have been privvy to many a teen’s conversation.  When a kid says ”My mom/dad/grandparent can’t stop me from XYZ”, it’s either an empty brag OR a sign that the adults have more problems than caring what the kid does.  Mostly kids know their boundaries because their parents clearly mark them. 

 ”My dad says I can’t get a tattoo until I get a job and pay for it myself,” says one.

“My aunt told me that the Social Security check is MY money,” says another, “but my mom said she decides what to do with it because she knew what Dad would have wanted.”

I’ve noticed that when it comes to money, parents have all sorts of ways to put their feet down. For example, people used to say that the best way to prevent drunken driving was to serve their kids alcohol at home.  If their friends wanted a drink, they had to stay overnight. But now people no longer serve minors at their children’s graduation parties. 

Why? Legal repercussions. A kid has a drink at their house and then goes elsewhere, gets hammered, and ends up dead behind the wheel. The liability is going to land on the doorstep of EVERYONE who served the kid.  

But people take a different tact when one of the criteria is their kids’ bodies. “It’s his body; it’s his choice” seems to be the guiding principal.

But it’s malarky. If that were the crux of the matter - whose body - then adults wouldn’t waste so much time keeping their kids from alcohol and drugs. What about suicide prevention? I mean, some kids suffer from depression and continue to do so into their adult lives. If they want to committ suicide, they’re going to find a way. The best thing we adults can do is make sure they know the best way to kill themselves, so they don’t botch it or leave a messy corpse. Right?

No, it’s not just proprietary rights to a body. It’s about safety. The Modern Golden Rule is “People have a right to do what they want, as long as they don’t impinge on anyone else’s rights.”  In some cases, “hurt” is used instead of “impinge”.

In either case, I tend to laugh at that. Even the best of teenagers seldom have an idea how their behaviour affects their future, let alone other people. I know that I never thought much about it until I had my ears pierced. My mom was against it, but said I could do it when I turned 16. (I forgot about it, but she reminded me after my birthday.)

Mom was completely flabbergasted when she had to sign a waiver because I wasn’t 18. ”If you wanted to have an abortion,” she said, “I wouldn’t even be consulted. But if you pass out and hit your head while getting your ears pierced, I have to take agree to pay your medical bills.” 

That got me to thinking (and I’ve rarely stopped since). If I’d gotten a raging ear infection, my my parents would have been expected to foot my ambulance and hospital bill. Even without a waiver, my parents would have been stuck with the bills if I had an abortion and started hemorrhaging. If I’d done any number of stupid things in my teen years - and beyond - my family would have given me long-term care or a funeral. (Or both.) They’ve have shouldered the burden of my consequences, because that’s what families do.

Mr. And Mrs. Safety believe that giving their son condoms will help him (and them) live consequence-free. Seemingly they hadn’t given a thought to the fact that other parents don’t want their daughters to be used as a training ground for their son. Nor have they considered whether his best buddies are ready for sexual peer pressure. (One of them definitely is NOT. He’s more interested in bikes and blowing up things with firecrackers than in girls.)

I didn’t say any of this to Mrs. Safety. I didn’t have to. One of the other ladies at the luncheon commented that even if kids are “going to do it anyway” - whatever IT is - they should have to work hard to do it and with the full understanding that they’re doing it despite their parents’ disapproval and better judgement.

“That’s the whole point of being a rebellious teenager,” she said. “You’ve got to look back and realize how wise your parents were.”

I’ve met a lot of people who are concerned about climate change (aka Global Warming) and/or pollution. It reminds me somewhat of when I was a kid, minus the fear of nuclear winter and radiation poisoning.

I take pollution seriously. I grew up hearing the warnings about mercury in fish, “dead” lakes due to contaminants, etc. I now live not far from electric plants and downstream from Chemical Valley in Sarnia, Ontario.

I think it’s bizarre that everything from food to clothes comes with so much packaging compared to even 15 years ago.  I look for #1 and #2 plastics, since those are in demand by our local recycler.  I also get meat wrapped in butcher paper when I can.

I haved joked that I contribute to cleaner air by NOT cutting the 11 trees that are crammed onto my 1/2 acre of land.  I keep my thermostat at 59 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, except for a couple hours in the morning and evening (63-64 degrees).

I haven’t bought the new lightbulbs, since mine still work. I’m a little leery of having a hazardous waste in the house, since mercury has been a problem in the Great Lakes area for many years. I know the bulbs will end up in the landfills, just like car batteries, old freon coolers, etc. People are lazy about garbage.

So, how big is my carbon footprint? 

I emit 4.3t carbon dioxide per year. The average American emission is 9.96tCO2/yr. I used the General Electric calculator, which used much more data than others, such as the DTE version..

http://www.ge.com/ivillage/calculator/# 

I wish it allowed fractions. I fill roughly 1/2 of a garbage bag weekly, but I had to put in a whole number. For that reason, it appears I generate mondo garbage (0.88tCO2 versus 0.09 for the average American).

My household CO2 generation seemed very high at first (over 4tCO2/year). That was because I put in a dollar amount of annual spending on electricity and natural gas. Honestly, entering the dollar amount is illogical.  For example, signing onto DTE’s “GreenCurrents” program for renewable electric generation will INCREASE an individual’s bill.  I’m not sure if wind, sun and biomass energy costs more or if the additional fee is a subsidy for development.

When I entered the precise kilowatt hours and therm factor, the new variables lowered my contribution to 1.4 versus the 3.62 average. 

So what’s your carbon footprint like?

Past midnight on Friday - therefore in the wee hours of Saturday - someone tried to open my front door. I got up to check it out. When I turned on the light, there was no one. I turned off the light and looked as far down the street as I could.

 Suddenly a boy stepped onto the neighbour’s yard and threw something FLAMING onto my car. It made a metallic sound as it struck the roof and part of it bounced off and onto the lawn, where it extinguished. I opened the door and yelled some unkind things about the idiot’s mother, then dialed 911. Two patrol cars arrived and determined that the flaming object was a merengue pie, set alight.  (The burned merengue was the consistency of styrofoam, so I didn’t recognize it right away.)

They didn’t catch the culprit but told me that a group of hooligans had broken the lights on another woman’s lawn about a half-mile away.

I followed up on a lead - a visiting kid who was trying to talk the neighbourhood kids into breaking windows on some houses for sale - but nothing. (Although I must say that people around here are very nice about being asked “Is a hooligan visiting you this weekend?” by a strange woman on a Saturday morning.) If I see the kid again, I’ll know him. But I’d really rather not see him again. 

 To a certain extent, this type of behavior is a result of the safety of my community. I NEVER experienced anything like this in the Detroit Metro area. Parents didn’t let their middleschoolers run all over the place at midnight, unless they were bad parents.

And that’s a strong possibility here, too, that this is the product of bad parents. I know, I know, I’m supposed to be sympathetic to parents with out-of-control kids. It’s not easy raising a decent kid in this day and age. Etcetera.

However, I keep remembering this guy talking to my parents when I was a kid. I don’t remember the gist of the conversation, but I recall him saying, “I’ve raised my kids. Now they have to make their choices.”

After he left, my dad looked at my mom and asked, “He’s raised his kids?”

My mom said, “The older one is 12 or 13.”

“He hasn’t raised his kids,” Dad said. “He’s just gotten lazy.”

 And so I pray to be left in peace, and for that boy and his parents. It’s hard to pray when I’m angry, and so I know I must let the anger go and concentrate on how sin hurts, so that boy is suffering though he enjoys it at the same time.