Stuff around the web: where are the families?

There is a podcast about CSLewis HERE.
discussing the abolition of men essay. I haven't listened to the podcast yet, but the essay laments the loss of the TAO, or the way morality and wisdom is ignored in the modern educational system.

Lewis is important, but I find his essays superficial in some ways, because he does not include in them any hint about the importance of family: the academic ideas are what matter...
And this is found in his fiction too: So at the end of Narnia I, the kids are (unmarried) kings and queens of Narnia who hunt the white stag.

Contrast with Tolkien, where the LOTR ends with Sam coming back to Rosie and his kids.



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The Pope speaks of the "gentrification" of the heart, and urges the self satisfied to get off their tushies and help the poor.

Pope Francis warned against “gentrification of the heart” as a consequence of comfortable living, and called on the faithful to “touch the flesh of Christ” by caring for the needy.

As an ex-missionary, I sometimes want to shake comfortable people and tell them to look around and notice the poor too, but ironically, in my practice of medicine, I see another picture: a lot of people care for the "needy" by quietly caring for their own families....and a lot of these "comfortable" people care for children, the elderly, neighbors, with little notice or applause.

According to estimates from the National Alliance for Caregiving, during the past year, 65.7 million Americans (or 29 % of the adult U.S. adult population involving 31 percent of all U.S. households) served as family caregivers for an ill or disabled relative.

and that statistic doesn't include busy mothers...


and one thing I fault the Post Vatican II church for is because it lauds "charity work" as the way to heaven, but ignores becoming holy in the duty of our daily lives (See Theresa's "little way", which was popular before the Vatican council).

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Making a life, making a living, making a difference.

Again, fine, but ignores family life as a source of meaning. I am reminded of one lady humorist who wondered why, in the post feminist world, working eight hours a day at a department store is supposed to be more meaningful than raising kids...

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Open sex is destroying eroticism?

Uh, sex is not about eroticism, but about expressing in one's "lovemaking" the care for the other at a deeper depth, and of course, it is about babies. Without noticing the disconnect, you make it merely something that is fun but lacking humanity....

Discussing sex without noticing babies (or noticing how many of the girls end up with abortions, end up becoming single moms, or end up with a nasty STD) is ignoring reality.

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ComeAwaywithme has lovely photos.
and this reminder:

Every child comes with the message

that God is not yet discouraged of man.

~Rabindranath Tagore

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