On Early Marriage

Yes, Mr. Bob approved my thesis. LOL, yesterday we had to write them up on the board again, and he tackled mine first.

Mr. Bob: So… where is this one going?
me: … You’re asking me what I mean to cover?
Mr. Bob: Yes.
me: Ah. Well… I was going to cover.. the science and stats behind guy and girl wiring, the dangers of premature heart-giving and the resulting emotional divorce, ask why would you go shopping for what you can’t buy, and even worse, why go shopping for what you don’t intend to buy in the first place, explore the question, “Do you love me because you need me or do you need me because you love me?” and –
Mr. Bob: Ok. Ok, that’s plenty. You’re good to go. *pause* I thought you were going to talk about Facebook or something…

What???? What does Facebook have to do with the dating game as the average American teen knows it to today only being a training ground for divorce??? I am not that shallow. Doesn’t he know that from my bashing The Pursuit of Happiness’ “I’m An Adult Now?”

Lol. Jk. Gotta love Mr. Bob.

Anyway. Mother sent me some related links and a thread. Wanted to share share =)

A Case for Earlier Marriage

While many sit wringing their hands over the seeming demise of marriage as an institution and the concomitant breakdown in sexual ethics, none are willing to state the most obvious reason — it is being delayed too long. [...]

[...] studies fail to reflect the reality that pre-marital sex, pre-marital pregnancy and cohabitation are not decreasing as the age of the unmarried increases. [...] Studies also cannot take into account physical, psychological, social and spiritual risks to persons during this extended non-marital period.

Against Eternal Youth

[...] well-meaning parents of the 1950’s confused vulnerability with moral innocence. They failed to recognize that children encouraged to be childish would jump at the chance, and turn childishness into a lifelong project. They were unprepared to respond when those children acquired the bodies of young adults and behaved with selfishness, defiance, and hedonism. [...]

Fifty years ago, when the average bride was 20, the divorce rate was half what it is now, because the culture encouraged and sustained those marriages. But if we communicate to young people that we think they’re inherently incapable of making a marriage work, they will surely meet that expectation. [...]

During those lingering years of unmarried adulthood, young people may not be getting married, but they’re still falling in love. They fall in love, and break up, and undergo terrible pain, but find that with time they get over it. This is true even if they remain chaste. By the time these young people marry they may have had many opportunities to learn how to walk away from a promise. They’ve been training for divorce. [...]

It’s not youth that passed us by, but adulthood.

The Cost of Delaying Marriage

[...] My late mother-in-law, who married at 20, told me that in her college circles in the mid-1950s, a man who took a woman out for more than three dates without intending marriage was considered a cad. Today, the man who considered marriage so rashly would be thought a fool. Likewise, a woman. [...]

A 20-year-old bride is considered as pitiable as a 30-year-old spinster used to be.

And the thread which I’ve been watching — and have been very amused =) I love the 4real moms.

How old were you when you got married?

OWNED… PUNK’D… EPIC FAIL… can I smile smile for a bit? xD

Smackdown: Barack Obama OWNED by College Student at Colorado Town Hall [FOX News]

“Punk-A-Prez” Zach Lahn PUNKS Obama on massive healthcare government expansion

Bento Box in the Heartland: A Response

No, I haven’t finished the book yet, but I wanted to address the chapter about arranged marriages. Linda compares her two divorces that started as “love marriages” to her parents’ strong arranged marriage. Linda recalls her mother saying that love marriages weren’t popular in Japan because “… everyone knows they don’t work… always end in breakup.” She makes it sound as if the reason her attempts at marriage failed were because of — just that — the fact that they were “love marriages”. But I disagree.

Linda made it clear that had her mother not chosen to fight to make her arranged marriage work, and instead, had returned to Japan, she, along with her entire family, would have been disgraced.

I argue that it is not a question of whether the marriage is arranged or for love. The issue here is the mindset.

I remember reading an article on dressing modestly. It addressed the fact that sometimes, the definition of “modesty” is affected by the culture. The article gave the example that a woman completely covered up in one part of the world might be “modest” by the standards of the society in which she moves, where everyone well covered up is the norm; whereas the girl on the other side of the world who dresses scantily may be “modest” by the standards of her culture, because it is the norm where she lives; and no doubt if these two ladies were to exchange places, they would be shocked by the standards of the other.

In the same way, it is not whether it is a “love marriage” or an arranged marriage, but rather — is “giving up” a disgrace or not? If Linda’s standards concerning a “love marriage” had been the same as her mother’s — that it would have been a disgrace to not fight to make the marriage work — then what kind of marriage it was would have been completely irrelevant. The question is: Is divorce acceptable? A godless society as opposed to a God-centered one will have different standards, and they have been and will continue to shock each other. I, on some level, will never get over the fact that some people out there simply don’t get what I believe marriage is — indissoluble. And I’m sure those people think I’m crazy for not looking at marriage as just the same as any other stage of relationship — severable.

(Ahaha. WordPress thinks “severable” isn’t a word.”)

If going back to Japan would not have disgraced Linda’s mother in the eyes of the society in which she moved at the time, would she have left? It’s perfectly possible. But the standards that she chose to live by were that you only get one shot at forever and you work it out, period, no questions asked; standards that she apparently did not pass on to her daughter. What a pity.

Don’t'cha LOVE being on the offensive? :D :D :D

http://www.4marks.com/VID0001371GTZG

Aha. Awake, yet?

NINO’S HOME!!!

Haha. Pics — http://gukkhser.multiply.com/photos/album/212

Pics of Nino

No, I haven’t actually seen him yet… hehe pics via the webcam which Daddy brought to the hospital. He’ll be coming home tomorrow. In response to Annika’s comment — his [nick]name is Nino :D

hehe tulog...

:D gising

ang laki ng mata.. hehe

:) Yun na, for now… Sabi ni Daddy he got lots of pics already, and he’ll send some tonight from the hospital. :D Will share with all of you when they come.

I hope your Christmas Season has been as beautiful as mine. God Bless.

IT’S A BOY!!!!!

yes. it’s a boy. i have a third brother. and i’d write more except the kids are yelling and refuse to go back to bed and are jumping up and down asking if it’s too early to wake friends/family up with phone calls. heaven bless them :)

YEAAAHHHH!!! *pumps fist* MABUHAY!

Yep. That’s definitely the corniest title I’ve come up with yet, but it’s straight from the bottom of my heart.

I have been to only a few events in my nearly-18 years that were intended solely to celebrate my roots. To name two — June 2002, when we went with some of the Brods to support Amelia Gordon, honored with the 2002 Pearl S. Buck International (PSBI) Woman of the Year Award; and Diversity Day in April of ’07. I suppose if I counted every family reunion, every Pinoy gathering, there would be a lot more, but here I’m only counting those where we gathered with the express purpose of ‘being patriotic’. Last night’s gathering was such.

The fight began at 11. Mum told me the luncheon girls were predicting that Manny would lose… ahhh… I do believe I had the best seat in the house. Haha. Seriously, though, I was smack dab in the middle, right in front of the TV, between Tito Gil and Jon. We were all crowded comfortably together in the Almarios’ living room. Some of us were on the couches, some standing behind the couches, others on various chairs, and a few of us on the floor. It didn’t really matter where we were as long as we could see. By the end of the first round, it was clear that Tita Fides was attempting to steal my title as the loudest person in the CFC community. Rotfl.

I don’t really have much to say about the actual fight. We discussed it in the car, and I did say that was the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in a while… especially when Manny hit Oscar’s face four times in a row. *Wow* Too sweet for words, I gotta tell you. And then the mommies were reprimanding me for being so bloodthirsty… but I’ll cover that part in another post.

I’ll probably see a lot of fights just as *awesome* as this one before I’m really that much older. But what I’ll carry with me forever is the mood of last night.

You could say that Pinoys are patriotic to a fault. I admit I’ve heard/seen things I’m not impressed with… there are definitely people who do not really understand what “Pinoy Pride” is, and they give it a cheap meaning. But the same could be said of “Proud to be an American”; people can give that a pretty cheap meaning, too. It depends on one’s grasp of what one really stands for.

Pinoy Pride, being ‘patriotic’ — and this is coming from a full-blood Pinoy, yes, but, mind you, one who was born and raised here in America, so my perception is probably very different from my parents and extended family back home — seems to have more to do with blood than anything else. It’s totally true that we’re better off in America. Why would I deny that? I don’t really think that I have to go into specifics for anyone reading this. So when I say I’m proud to be Pinoy… it’s not that I’m putting down America’s government or something.

Pinoy Pride is something that I experience… when I say to Mom or Mama that a particular phrase translated into English completely loses its depth… or when I talk about the general parent-child relationship in Filipino culture being completely different from the parent-child relationship in the American culture… or when I say that nothing beats Pinoy cooking… or when Mom finds stuff like moymoypalaboy on youtube and we laugh and say that that’s a perfect example of why Pinoys never get depressed… or when Tita Cynthia laughs quietly and says that she’s not worried about the economic ‘crisis’ here in America, because, “Poverty? Go to the Philippines. Why should I be worried? These people that are worried… they have no concept of poverty. After what I’ve seen in the Philippines, I’m not worried.”

That is Pinoy Pride. When put that way, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful things that I have been blessed with.

And that is what I experienced last night, in a way that I can’t remember ever experiencing it before. Again, it’s really a blood thing. The few times I’ve watched boxing for random reasons, I never felt a bond, say, with any of the American fighters. Why would I? “Proud to be an American” doesn’t cover that. But Pinoy Pride does. Because of the blood. We were cheering Manny… did any of us know him personally? No. But he was part of us… we were bound by blood. And that is what we were cheering last night. That is what we gasped over… groaned over… yelled every time he landed a punch… flinched when he was hit back… cried out and laughed in exhilaration during the slow-motion play-backs… every time he got de la Hoya… “Manny is gradually reconfiguring de la Hoya’s beautiful face,” that’s a line I’ll never forget… and went crazy over when the stats were up, showing 224 punches landed by Manny to de la Hoya’s 83. This was our blood brother, and he won for us. Our hero. Does that sound pathetic? Not to me.

And at the same time, the laughs afterwards — at Manny’s english, for instance — show that it’s not as if we put him up on a pedestal and idolize him. It just goes to show that our Pinoy Pride does not blind us… that we do not fail to recognize that he is a fellow human being, that while we glory in his glory, it’s no insult to him to laugh at the line Tita Fama particularly picked out, “I deserved my sacrifices,” complete with amusing Pinoy accent xD. I think that hit me as much as anything else did that night.

That’s a night I’ll be shivering over for a while yet… and I can’t wait for the next one.

Mabuhay!

There Will Be Tears (a.k.a. Yes, Aliens Have Arrived)

Oh I cried last night. And I’ll tell you straight out.

I didn’t cry for myself. I cried for all the babies.

And I’m crying again now.

The babies… the children… no, no, no, not blobs of nothing… but LIFE… murder…

Maybe I am angry at the lack of understanding of the core values of the Church, of the non-negotiables.

Maybe I am angry at all the lies that were told, and all the truths that were pushed aside.

Maybe I am bitter, disgusted…

But God is still God.

I am not angry at God. And I am not bitter towards Him. And I am not disgusted with what He has willed.

I am only thinking of what an amazing Kuya said… We Are The New Jerusalem.

Are we in exile, then? Does America need to hit bottom? Does America need Obama to teach us how much we need God, and how foolish we have been to turn our backs on Him? Is this Babylon? Is this Assyria? Maybe.

I’m not sad for myself. I don’t mean to make it sound like I’m not growing anymore, but I think those who know me best will understand what I mean when I say — I weep for those who have to find themselves in these next four years. I weep for all the innocent children who go to school, and whose teachers have more influence over them than their own parents. I weep for the families who have fought so hard against the tide, fought to keep their families intact, fought to pass on that understanding of the sanctity of Life to their children. I weep for the unborn.

What is that prayer I learned while I was in AZ? “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, I love you very much. I beg you to spare the life of the unborn child that I have spiritually adopted who is in danger of abortion.” Think of all the children who will be spiritually adopted by the faithful in the next four years. Think of the numbers.

Can you imagine… FOCA… but no. Don’t go there.

Anti-Catholicism is still the only tolerated — accepted — prejudice today. Ready for the persecution? No, don’t tell me I’m overreacting. Persecution of the Church has never ceased, and you can’t suppose it won’t get worse these next four years? But it’s our road to heaven. For that, I am thankful.

Yes, yes, there’s still something to be thankful about, there always is. See? I’ve not gone off my rocker. I simply can’t unload everything I wish I could unload into this post.

But here. I will share with you one of the thoughts that I comfort myself with, and I hope you will, too, if you have need of comfort — Yes, Aliens Have Arrived.

You’re reading the words of one, now.

‘For in the sin of the first man, Adam, we were expelled from the homeland of paradise and sent into this world of exile, and thus we live in this middle earth as if we have no homeland here…’

I find it so easy to forget that this world is temporary. I find it so easy to forget that I don’t belong here. But I don’t, I don’t, I don’t, and I know I need to hammer that into myself. I think last night did that for me in a way that nothing else that has ever happened to me has done. Yes, I’m an alien. Silly, silly me, I don’t belong on this earth. I belong in Paradise.

How appropriate was our assigned reading last week in English class.

‘… our Lord has kindled for us many spiritual lanterns that we must light up for ourselves with heavenly piety and holy doctrine, so that no one will remain in darkness of heresy who wishes to see the light of truth. What are these lanterns that our Lord has given to us to enlighten the dimness of humankind’s infidelity? They are the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, the bishops, the priests, and the many other divine teachers of God’s church. And we have great need to observe the right doctrine and the holy examples and obey the holy gospel with fear and fasten it firmly in our hearts…

‘We cannot always have laughter… I well know that everyone desires to see true joy in middle earth. But it is not, was not, nor ever will be… we should seek true joy where it is… in Christ himself in… the kingdom of heaven… the Lord himself says… “In hoc mundo pressuram habebitis. Mundus hic gaudebit; vos autem tristes eritis, sed tristitia vestra convertitur in gaudium.” “You will have oppression in this middle earth, and middle earth will rejoice in this and you will be sad. But you will be free from sighing, for it will turn again for you into joy.” …

‘… we should be very thoughtful and very sorrowful as long as we are here in our efforts… so that we may again rejoice in the heavenly home of the celestial kingdom. Nor should we ever consider the labor and trouble here in the world too long, because it comes to an end. But the rewards never come to an end that are gilded for us on behalf of those troubles…

‘… while we are here living, let us ask the mercy of God, so that he might send us out thus in the love of eternal life that we might the more love the eternal homeland than this present life and always think the more about the life to come than about the one we lead here. These are the days of toil and labor as we ourselves may understand in the manifold torments that daily fall on human kind in tempests because of our deeds.’ ~ unknown homilist in Anglo-Saxon Spirituality by Robert Boenig

I also remember something Mrs. McIntyre told me about… The grandfather of a teen from their homeschooling group had died, and while I was in AZ, we went to the wake. Mrs. M told me afterwards what the grandmother had said… that she knew that that day, she was blessed. Blessed. Isn’t that beautiful? Blessed in her sorrow, in her grief, in her loss, but by heaven, she was blessed.

There will be tears… but — and this makes me smile — we are blessed. We are blessed with this cross.

Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

God bless the faithful. And God help America.

I Believe in High Stakes

Heck, you bet I do. I think I’ve hit on the highest stakes ever. (*Maybe I should go edit my CREDO post…*)

I am loving this post, which, among other things, tackles defining the term ‘Cafeteria Catholic.’

Catholicism has to be taken and lived out as a whole, or not. In one of his homilies this past month, Fr. Tom reminded us that when we approach the altar, we receive all of Christ. All of Him. Not just bits and pieces. When we receive the Eucharist, we receive Christ in His fullness. And if we come to receive all of Him, then we are expected to live out all that He Is. Not just bits and pieces. How can we be truly One with Him if we deliberately fail to uphold all that He stands for?

But I wanted to hash this out even further. If we’ve settled the fact that Catholicism can’t be taken in bits and pieces, then let’s go further. Why not? IOW, why Catholicism? What does Catholicism offer that is so… profound, for lack of a better word… that we cannot afford to not take it as a whole?

Slowly, now. A bit at a time.

God created Man. Yes?

So then it follows that… as God created Man, He knows how we are meant to function? that He knows our full potential? that He knows all that Man was created to be? I think that makes sense, doesn’t it? He created us with purpose. God alone knows why we’re made the way we are. So let us say that we do not know everything we need to know about how to be human. We’re not like other creatures. We have free will. To use extreme examples, by our free will, we could choose to live like birds? but that would not be what we were created to be, yes? So that would be silly, because we would be failing to be… human?

God created the universe as a hierarchy; some things are “higher”, more valuable, and more important than others. Each human being may be equal in value in the sight of God, since all are made in his image; but irrational animals are not equal to human beings. They do not have rational souls, free choice, or the knowledge of God. If animals were equal to humans, eating meat would be cannibalism. ~ Peter J. Kreeft, Catholic Christianity

So, having established that, having free will, man could choose to act in ways that man was not created to act, to do things that man was not created to do, that if we act certain ways, do certain things, we could, if you will, fail to be human? let us move on.

We believe that Jesus Christ was [is] both fully God and fully Man, that He possessed two complete and whole Natures in one Person.

If we believe this, then what we, as Catholics, are saying is that we believe that the Catholic Church was founded by God Himself. We believe that Mother Church was not founded by men claiming to be inspired by God, or visited by an angel, etc. etc., but that God Himself, our Creator, entered Time in the Person of Jesus Christ and founded the Roman Catholic Church.

We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what is to be believed. Any theories we build up as to how Christ’s death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary: mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they do not help us, and, even if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself. ~ C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Yes, that is Christianity. But I want to take this further.

I do not view Catholicism as a ‘religion’ the way Protestantism is a ‘religion’ or any other denomination is a ‘religion’. What the Catholic Church teaches is not merely a set of rules. It’s not merely a ‘how-to-get-to-heaven’ deal. At its core, the knowledge that the Catholic Church possesses is, quite simply, how to be human.

If God created Man, and if He knows how man is supposed to be human, and if Jesus Christ is God and founded the Church, then the knowledge that God Himself gave to the Catholic Church is how to be human. So Catholicism — forgive the crudeness — could be viewed as a hand-book on how to be human.

If you want to take it even further, God intended for Man to be perfect. If God intended for man to be perfect, then Catholicism is a hand-book on how to be the perfect human, because that is what we were created to be: We were created to be perfect. To be without sin, without error, without blemish! To be  pure and whole and holy and beautiful in every way, in all that we experience, in all our actions and our words and our thoughts, that our very being was meant to be perfect, perfect. Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that beautiful?

In one of our discussions in ToB, I told my Sisters that I didn’t agree with the phrase, “Errare est humanum,” because really, to err is to not be human. Now, we are imperfect by nature, but we were not created to be. Our fallen natures are not a part of the original creation. Adam and Eve could have chosen to stay perfect, and then we might be all that we were created to be… but because of the Fall, we don’t know all that we need to know about how to live the way we were created to live. We need help. What better source than our Creator?

What more could we ask for than a hand-book on how to be everything He intended us to be?

Wow.

And that is why we cannot take Catholicism in bits and pieces. It’s not about Someone up there punishing us every time we make a mistake, it’s not a “do this/don’t do this or you’ll go to hell” thing, it’s so much deeper — It’s all there, everything that we need to become human, everything that we need to become perfect. It follows, then, that in failing to make correct use of that knowledge that God has given us so fully and so freely, we would be failing to be human?

Ouch.

Those are some pretty high stakes, eh?

On a side note, as I was hashing this out (with the help of my two best friends ever, much thanks to them =), one point that I want to clarify is the misconception that the Catholic Church is all for bashing all other denominations and denounce them as utterly and completely wrong.

Not exactly.

To use an analogy similar to the one Fr. Riccardo used in Common Ground (I changed it a bit, and sort of made it… more… colorful? lol, I hope no one minds), say there’s a box. That box contains all the pieces you need to build the perfect human. What the Church claims, then, is that She has that box, She has all the pieces, and that God Himself, in Person, gave Her that box.

I don’t doubt that various persons might very well have been inspired by Christ to do this and do that, to come to realize so-and-so. By our nature, we long for Truth, and Christ is Truth. In seeking Him, I don’t doubt that Protestants may very well have hit on truths that led them to disagree with whoever founded the denomination they initially belonged to and found those 3000 + other denominations.

But what Mother Church claims is that She has all the pieces. Not that other denominations are wrong, so much as that they do not have the fullness of the knowledge given to the Church, because the Church’s knowledge comes directly from God and is completely uninfluenced by the opinions of imperfect humans. IOW, they don’t have all the pieces. All other denominations are still influenced by the imperfect fallen human nature. The reason there are over 3000 Protestant denominations is because of the difference in human opinion. They cannot agree amongst themselves, they are not united.

Perhaps my next post should be on the four marks of the Church…

Tabs… and a bunch of comments.

1. Oh bleh. Social pressures indeed. So homeschool them! Teach them to be confident about who they are as a person! You’ll find they’ll break less easily if they know that it’s what’s inside that counts. Haha aren’t I so heartless? I really have no sympathy for these kids. I didn’t get a cell phone till about a month before I turned 17. I never felt deprived. Maybe a little *urgh* when someone would go, “Can I have your cell?” “Well… here’s my home phone, just ask for me.” “Oh.” and then they’d never call me, because they felt shy about asking for me. Lol. But geez, that’s undermining parents’ authority and basically teaching kids that they should be scared of parents rather than be respectful of them. I don’t think kids should have cell phones before they fully understand their parents’ authority to be monitoring them. The kid has a cell = mom and dad don’t have to know who they’re talking to. Bleh! Or maybe I’m just the weird one. I got off the phone at 12:45 AMish and went to Mum’s room and talked to her till about 1:30. Lol. Took me a while to get to this point, I suppose, but I don’t regret it.

2. Now I really do have to read this. The movie was a bit dragging, but I loved it.

3. Don’t miss the essential Circulation Note. rotflwtime.

4. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. She is so amazing!!!! I love the 4real moms!!!!

5.

AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH I still haven’t started on my essay for Saturday!!!!!! Hahahahaha. Ah well. Back to school, then…

ooh look what i found

Culture of Death

Nope, this isn’t one of those profound, beautifully-worded, sound-in-logic, everything-you’ve-never-wanted-to-face but it’s-forcing-you-to-face-it, life-changing essays or something. It is, however, research for the, hopefully, profound, beautifully-worded, sound-in-logic, everything-you’ve-never-wanted-to-face but it’s-forcing-you-to-face-it, life-changing essay that is on the way. I think.

*FURIOUS*

BLEARGHH.

http://www.andthesethygifts.com/2008/07/14/can-you-believe-this-defund-planned-parenthood/