An incredibly beautiful article over at HuffPo. This message of LIFE must be shared! Here’s a taste:
This is where community comes in. Mothers, fathers, family members and friends need each other to come alongside and encourage that the Creator has a full intention for this life. To use this story to challenge our understanding of what it truly means to be human. To dispel our temptation to control, preserve order and protect a superficial version of what a perfect family must be.
When our second and third children were en utero, Rebekah and I were highly encouraged to do prenatal screenings; but we politely declined. While we knew we had the highest odds of repeating a Down syndrome birth, it made no difference to us. A life was a life. On our worst days, we focused on the fear of the unknown. On our best days, we focused on trusting God to give us the strength to parent whomever’s life we were about to be given the privilege of stewarding.
Alright everyone, I’m sure you’ve all seen the Why I Love Jesus But Hate Religion video going around. It’s gotten close to 10 million views in just a couple days, so obviously it hit a nerve with a lot of people. Here is a Catholic response!
Great, short article.
“Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.” -Pope John Paul II
“If religious freedom is the path to peace, religious education is the highway which leads new generations to see others as their brothers and sisters, with whom they are called to journey and work together so that all will feel that they are living members of the one human family, from which no one is to be excluded.
“The family founded on marriage, as the expression of the close union and complementarity between a man and a woman, finds its place here as the first school for the social, cultural, moral and spiritual formation and growth of children, who should always be able to see in their father and mother the first witnesses of a life directed to the pursuit of truth and the love of God. Parents must be always free to transmit to their children, responsibly and without constraints, their heritage of faith, values and culture. The family, the first cell of human society, remains the primary training ground for harmonious relations at every level of coexistence, human, national and international. Wisdom suggests that this is the road to building a strong and fraternal social fabric, in which young people can be prepared to assume their proper responsibilities in life, in a free society, and in a spirit of understanding and peace.”
“Religious freedom expresses what is unique about the human person, for it allows us to direct our personal and social life to God, in whose light the identity, meaning and purpose of the person are fully understood. To deny or arbitrarily restrict this freedom is to foster a reductive vision of the human person; to eclipse the public role of religion is to create a society which is unjust, inasmuch as it fails to take account of the true nature of the human person; it is to stifle the growth of the authentic and lasting peace of the whole human family.” -Pope Benedict XVI, World Day of Peace, 1 Jan 2011