Being! Or Nothingness

Hannah Arendt

The Library of Congress has an online collection of Hannah Arendt's papers and writings.  It's pretty cool.  Check it out!

The Perfect Child Myth

ZENIT has an article which includes my friend Dr. Gerry Brungardt who recently attended a bio-ethics conference in Italy on "neo-natal euthanasia."

The palliative care specialist from Wichita, Kansas, was surprised to learn that the average Italian woman has 12 sonograms during her pregnancy.

"It indicates our current fear of the non-perfect child," Brungardt said, "for which Dr. Bellieni has coined the term 'handiphobia' -- fear of the handicapped, the risks and realities of in vitro fertilization, embryo adoption, and neonatal/infant euthanasia."

He was referring to Dr. Carlo Bellieni, a neonatologist from Siena and self-described "fetus doctor" who teaches "The Myth of the Perfect Child" course during the week of studies at the Regina Apostolorum athenaeum's School of Bioethics.

A recurring theme in the many anecdotes Bellieni told his class of 80 students was how often parents reduce children to objects.

"We saw in this class how the child is no longer loved unconditionally and respected as a human person," said Dr. Laura Nino, a medical researcher from Houston, Texas, who participated in the course. Rather, the child is sometimes "seen as an object of possession which parents can dispose of when he or she falls short of their expectations," she added.

Among the more interesting comments in the article are those by Dr. Carlo Bellieni who teaches a class called "The Myth of the Perfect Child."  He says that one of the great factors resulting in the fear parents have of a "handicapped" child and the obsession with the "perfect child" is that we have lost the capacity to say "I" and thus "you" to a fetus.  In other words, these problems affect our very being, our capacity to recognize our dependence on another and our awareness of being in relationship with all of reality.

"A healthy fetus dies for every 200 amniocenteses done which, for 35-year-old woman, is about the same risk as having a Down syndrome child," observed Bellieni.

"This means that in order to eliminate one Down syndrome child, we accept the risk of the death of another innocent child as an adverse effect of the amniocentesis," he said.

Bellieni sees a deeper problem lurking behind the overuse of amniocentesis and the widespread tolerance of abortion. That problem touches on interpersonal relations and even self-image, all of which he talks of in almost philosophical language.

"I" of the storm

"Most fundamentally, we cannot say 'I' anymore because saying 'I' would mean that we have found someone who has called us by name and loved us only because we exist, not because of our utility," Bellieni contended.

"This loss of the capacity to say 'I' leads to our loss of the capacity to say 'You' to the fetus," he added. "We do not love ourselves anymore and therefore we cannot love others. We see others, including the fetus, as a means and not as the end they truly are. One of the consequences of this outlook would be neonatal euthanasia."

Education, the Most Important Work

Famiglia Christiana has an interview with Fr. Julian Carron about education and the importance this plays in the lay movement Communion and Liberation.

Famiglia Christiana:  How can freedom be safeguarded in the relationship between teacher and pupil, parents and children,?

Fr. Carron: We are all poor wretches, we can only share with others what is useful for our own life. If you find in another what is useful for your own life, you had better accept it! This is education. The only thing that we can do for someone else is offer him what is useful for us for getting up in a good mood, for going to work gladly, and for tackling this or that situation. “I offer you this if it is useful for you.” Indoctrination is the word most foreign to this attitude. When you recognize that the relationship with a person like this makes your life more human, then you naturally recognize him as someone to learn from, a father, and there is no need for the other to have to convince you. St Paul has a fine expression to describe this: “We do not wish to lord it over your faith, but to collaborate in your joy.” This is the finest definition of the relationship between teacher and disciple. Fr. Giussani used to say, “I’ll try telling you this today, but if I am unable to answer your question, come back tomorrow and ask me again so that I can try to tell you again, so as to help you on your journey.” This is what we have to try, all the rest is useless. It is useless to impose yourself on the other person’s freedom. It’s like buying a pair of shoes that don’t fit; sooner or later you will have to change them because your feet hurt. In the same way, sooner or later, a person will rebel against an education forced on him.

Who is William Shakespeare?

Mercatornet has some articles on the recent Shakespeare scholarship that is seeking to decipher who the Bard really was.  There are those interested in his "Catholicity" others who are looking for his "coded" politics.  It's better than the Da Vinci Code, at least this guy writes in English!  Anyway, check it out:  The Real William Shakespeare

A Reason to Stop Protesting

There is a great post at Pastor John Wright's Blog on his recent dialogue over the Psalms with Fr. Meinrad Miller, OSB.  It seems that a friendship has begun between Pastor John and the local community of Communion and Liberation in Los Angeles.  They invited Fr. Miller (who is from St. Benedict's Abbey in Atchison, KS) and Pastor John Wright to talk about Fr. Giussani's latest work published in English The Psalms.

Pastor John writes of his friendship with CL and what it means to him:

I have found great friendship and hope in the Communion and Liberation friends that I have made. The movement represents the best of post-Vatican II catholicism, a reason for "Protestants" to stop protesting and join in conversation and unity, grounded not in a social program outside the church or in some transcendental human "faith", but in, to use Father Giussani's language, "the fact of Jesus Christ". Catholicity, not ecumenicity, becomes the crucial commitment within this relationship. I believe that the descendants of another renewal movement within the church catholic, that begun by John Wesley in 18th century England, share much, much in common with this "new" renewal group, Communion and Liberation. Who knows what God has in store for the future?

And he writes of The Psalms and Don Gius:

Father Giussani reminds us at the beginning of his book that “The Psalms are the form of a dialogue defined by God Himself for His relationship with the people He has chosen” (p. 9). This simple observation is very astute. The Psalms speak the voice of humans in their experience. There is no “objective narrator” who hovers above the text. The voice comes from within each psalm, asking the reader to identify with the human words spoken in the text. The words are human words expressed to God.

A Chicken in Every Pot, and Laptop in Every Lap

So the new $100 laptops invented by Nicholas Negroponte and his team at MIT are still the hottest news in the technology world.  Politicians, techno-savy journalists, and the biggest names in the tech world are all over this like white on rice.

Imagine if every child in the world were linked to the internet. Even in the wastes of the Sahara, the slums of Sao Paulo or the jungles of Thailand they could do courses in astrophysics, play on-line games, watch CNN, get spam about Viagra and access the complete works of Shakespeare.

I find it intriguing.  Assuming this actually works and the computers don't end up on the black market and in the hands of profiteers, people all over the world will suddenly have their world dramatically changed.  You can picture it, sort of . . . young African cow herders messaging across the world with Mongolian shepherds.

But I'm left wondering . . . is this really what our young people need?  Is this really an adequate answer to their needs?  It's an interesting idea, but I join others in wondering if this is really needed, feasible,  or appropriate.

From Peru come questions about how laptops will be integrated into faltering education systems. Eduardo Villanueva Mansilla, of the Pontificia Universidad Católica, is another sceptical blogger: “Considering that many developing countries haven't reached the point where the goals of education are clear and understood by all those involved, the main danger of a project like this one is to create a huge mirage of understanding, one where the main thrust of education is to turn kids into techno-savvy individuals with the potential to find and understand all the information they need for themselves, without consideration of little things like social cohesion, a common historical frame of reference for all, development of local knowledge, promotion of aboriginal languages, and a really long list following. School is about all of them, not just the nice but narrow focus that OLPC has.”

What effect immersion in Western technology and culture will have on traditional societies is another issue. “I am sure that there is little analysis of what the impact will be,” says Dr Nightingale. But in any case he thinks that it is almost impossible to predict what changes will occur in a society as a result of technological change.

And Dr Mitra says optimistically that India can absorb the challenges offered by exposure to the internet. “I think it not a question of what the internet will do to such children, it is a question of what the children will do to the internet. I think India and her children have a culture that is not easy to change. Instead of the internet causing cultural change, I think Indian children will cause cultural change in the internet. This has happened before -- to Alexander, to the Mughals, to the British, to cable TV, why not to the internet?”

A $100 Laptop is a nice idea, but isn't a real education what is more desperately needed?