Many people have difficulty with the Catholic Church’s teaching on sex and gender because they fail to recognize its philosophical dimension. As inheritors of twentieth-century positivism, many today assume that the quantitative sciences are the arbiters of truth, and that any other way of knowing, except that privileged and direct access to one’s own internal subjectivity, can be no more than private opinion or pseudoscience. This philosophical error silences objection and shuts down dialogue by defining disagreement with itself as hateful and anathematizing.
This beautiful video comes from Real Alternatives, a non-profit group which works to support and provide alternatives to abortion for pregnant women to choose life for their babies. The video, a combination of animations and ultrasound images, shows the development of a baby in its mother’s womb and describes the changes which take place at each stage of pregnancy.
Father, you want me to be what? A Eucharistic minister? Oh no, Father, I am not worthy! There were my responses – thirteen years ago – when my parish priest approached me to consider serving the People of God as an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist (the more proper liturgical designation). With his persistence and after the necessary training, there I was at Mass, holding a paten, and in it – the Body of Christ! Naturally shy, my impulse was to pray for communion to get over soon.