Voting for Life

You know what’s great about our country is that when this election is over in a couple days we’ll all still be friends. Obviously there are some very differing opinions on who the best candidate is to lead our country and I’m glad people feel open enough to share there views with everyone. With that being said and having read many of your emails, I’d like to add my thoughts to conversation.

I’ve always considered myself pro-life since my early upbringing and I think much of that can be attributed to growing up in a family that cherishes and loves life so much. A year ago when the campaigns were just getting started, I questioned many of the same social justice issues that have been brought up by some of you and wondered if these could out way the importance of the abortion issue. Then my wife and I conceived our first child and I saw his heart beating in an ultrasound when he was only three weeks old. As the pregnancy continued my wife and I got to see and feel him kicking and waving….hiccuping and definitely growing inside her. Then the morning of September 8 we got to hold our baby boy for very first time. I know many of you have experienced this feeling before but what an amazing moment that was. It was at this moment and in countless others since then as I’ve stared into the eyes of my child, that I knew without a doubt that the greatest cruelty or injustice possible was that we as a society would turn our heads and let millions of innocent children die.

Think about it this way….You see two people on the street. One is a child being brutally murdered. The other can be a person facing whatever other evil or social justice issue you can think of. If you can only save one which would save? Looking at it this way makes the answer blatantly obvious to me.

Recently Dr. Alveda C. King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, stated that, “The fight against abortion is a new frontier in the Civil Rights Movement…We are not following Martin’s dream if we do not stand up for the voiceless.” I wholeheartedly agree with her and truly feel that abortion is the civil rights issue or out times. There are many issues that affect us more directly as individuals and perhaps that is why many people choose to give more importance to them. As a society though, there can be nothing more terrible then the thousands of babies who are legally slaughtered each day. Whatever struggles and injustices my son will face in this life at least he will get to experience them. Friends and family, the way I see it the war overseas is terrible and our economy is a problem, but let’s not forget that there is a bigger war taking place right here in our own nation. Sacrifices need to be made but innocent children should never be the price.

So I guess you can probably guess who I’ll be voting for tomorrow. Obama and McCain are so far apart on the abortion issue that it’s not even close decision. I’ll gladly cast my vote for the millions like my son who don’t get a say in the matter. I’m voting for life.

"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
-- Mother Teresa

Baptism and Original Sin

Recently my wife and I took a Baptism class through our local church and unfortunately we left wondering just how much we could trust the deacon who lead it. He helps with most of the Masses and activities in the parish and listening to his homilies he's always seemed like he knows his stuff, but as he lead the class he laid out a very different view of Baptism and Original Sin then what I was familiar with. He said that Vatican II changed the way we understand Original Sin and that we needed to get the idea of our child's sole being stained with it, as portrayed in the old Baltimore Catechism, out of our head. To quote the handout material he gave us....

Modern theology defines original sin as follows;
"Original sin is the condition of being born into a sin filled world."
A. It is not a stain on the innocent child's soul.
B. The following can counteract the negative things in our world.
FAMILY
LOVE
CHURCH/FAITH

He expounded on this saying that Baptism is mostly about starting a faith journey and said that there was a big long document on Baptism that came out of Vatican II and goes into detail on this. To a degree this makes sense to me, but if this is the new official definition of original sin then what does it really mean when we say that Mary was conceived Immaculately (without Original Sin)? She most definitely was born into "a sin filled world." Also if original sin is diminished this way it also seems to diminish the whole sacrament of Baptism and ultimately the concept of our redemptions.

What really made me question the authenticity of what this deacon was saying though was that when one woman at the class asked the deacon what would happen to a baby who died without being Baptized, he told her that the churches "official stance" is that the child is completely innocent and would go straight to heaven. It may seem like nitpicking but salvation is a pretty important matter and what he said seemed to fly directly in the face of what I've read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church so I looked it up and it pretty clearly states in so many words that we have every reason to hope in God's Mercy for such a child but we can't know for sure.

This all lead me to our main concern which was how soon we need to have our child Baptized. We did ask the deacon and he said there is no rush or recommended time table. In fact they only do Baptisms twice a month at our church due to the size of the parish. This sounded like good news to us as we've asked my brother to be the Godfather but he is going to be studying in Europe this August through December so will most likely be gone for the first few months of our baby's life. We would love for him to be able to participate in the Baptism and think it would mean a lot to him so it would be great to have the baby Baptized in December when he gets back. At the same time we want to make sure we are putting our baby's salvation ahead of what would be nice for us.

With all this confusion I turned to my Great Aunt who is Notre Dame Sister and has been involved in Catholic education for many years. She was the perfect person to talk to as she teaches a similar class at her parish every month and has dealt with all of these issues. She told me that she always explains Original Sin this way; She takes off her glasses and tells people that she has poor vision and that this poor vision is something she inherited from her parents. She didn’t do anything wrong to merit her poor eyesight but it’s just something she was born with. Now she says thanks to modern wonders she can use eyeglasses and which help her see clearly. She still has the same genes but thanks to the glasses she doesn’t have to suffer the effects of bad eyesight that were passed down to her.

This analogy made a lot of sense to me as it’s easy to see relate her inherited poor vision to the original sin and her glasses to Baptism. My aunt went on to tell me that our deacon was partially correct in that we are born into a sinful world and baptism helps us counter that, but she said a better definition for Original Sin is that it is simply our inherited tendency towards sin. While we are all born good and innocent we do inherit this tendency from our first parents’ sin. In a way we our soul is stained though not in an evil way. Through Baptism we receive grace to counter this tendency towards sin and become a child of God.

Now as far as when we should Baptize our child, my great aunt explained to me that while the Catholic Church can’t declare for a fact what happens to a child that dies prior to being Baptized, the Church does teach that there are three ways we can be Baptized. The most common is by water but lesser known ways include Baptism by blood (as when someone is martyred) and Baptism by desire (which is when a person wishes to be Baptized but dies prior before they can be). It would only make sense that this Baptism by desire would apply if a child passes away who’s parents desired Baptism for that child. With that in mind she didn’t see any reason why waiting for my brother to be there would be a problem as long as our baby is healthy.

All this has really made me look long and hard at something I’ve taken for granted most of my life. I’ve always seen Baptism as something that was important but never really stopped to ponder what it really theologically speaking was about. It makes so much more sense now and I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to learn more about my Faith. Hopefully as our child grows up my understanding about my Faith can also continue to grow.

A Game to Remember

I don’t get to go to many Twins games but Friday night my mother-in-law got my wife and me tickets to watch the Minnesota Twins host the Boston Redsox at the Metrodome and what a game it turned out to be. It was special to us since we are expecting our first child so this was technically our baby’s first Twins’ game. I think it’s safe to say our baby is a Twins fan and a good luck charm. At first things looked pretty good for the Twins as they got out to an early lead. Boof Bonser couldn’t hold it though and ended up giving the lead back. He didn’t pitch as bad as his line of 6 runs in 4 plus innings would indicated but in the end it just wasn’t good enough. It seemed like there were plenty of little things (like batter reaching on a strikeout that Joe Mauer couldn’t find) that prolonged innings for him so that was too bad. Good teams like Boston usually take advantage of things like that and they did.

“Oh well,” I figured. At least it had been an exciting game. Plus we had decent seats down the first base line except for the incredible number of people who don’t understand the idea of only leaving or returning to their seats between innings. One gal in front of us apologized at least 4 or 5 times for having to stand up to let people by her during the game. It really wasn’t her fault of course but was nice of her to say. Things did get exciting in our area as the t-shirt the mascot shoots into the stands between innings landed just out of my reach a row behind me. Then I had an even better shot at catching a foul ball a couple innings later. Matt Tolbert lined one our way and I stood up and reached out both hands to pull it in. Instead of the ball I got the person’s hand who was sitting in front of me. He had stuck his hand up at the last minute otherwise I would have had a nice souvenir for our baby’s first game.

Once the seventh inning stretch came we decided to go get some food before they closed up the vending stands and we ended up walking around the concourse all the way to centerfield. We figured we might as well watch the last couple of innings from out there so spread out in what seemed to be our own personal section which was really kind of nice. Then came the bottom of the ninth with the Twins still down by a run. Delmon Young led off the inning. He had nearly scored to tie the game a few innings prior only to get thrown out at the plate on a close play. Once again he got on base with a sharp single to center. Next up was Matt Tolbert. I knew we weren’t going to get ball from him where we were sitting now but still felt a little uneasy when I saw him lay down a sacrifice bunt. He did it well but next up was Adam Evertt who even with a couple of nice hits early seemed unlikely to get a hit off of Redsox closer Jonathan Papelbon. Sure enough he popped out almost immediately leaving the fate of the game in the hands of the exciting yet young Carlos Gomez. Young stole third meaning all we needed was a base hit to tie the game up and Gomez took some tough pitches that early this year he would have swung at and ended up walking. Then he stole second putting us into position to win the game on a base hit. Mike Lamb came to the plate and looked overmatched on the first two pitches. My wife was unfamiliar with Lamb since he’s a new player on the team and asked if he was good. My look told her otherwise but after fowling off a couple of pitches he dumped a 1-2 pitch down the left field line for a walk of base hit. The dome went pretty crazy for a couple of minute and we gave each other a big high five and hug as the Twins celebrated on the field.

This was easily the most memorable Twins game I’ve seen in person and one I won’t be forgetting anytime soon. It was interesting to me that the come back and even most of the earlier runs came from the bats of the new Twins’ players. Tonight as Minnesota fans made some memories with the new Twins’ players we made some of our own with our newest addition. Definitely will make for some good memories to tell our child down the road who I’m sure will be a Twins’ fan as well.