Statements like the one below are precisely why Rod Dreher's Ewell Gibbons' brand of Crunchy Conservatism alienates me. He's a gifted writer and makes a lot of excellent points, but the mindset reminds me of a Pharisetical attitude eager to lay up burdens on people. It's not enough to practice NFP, you have to eat well:
"Because Julie and I are tradition-minded Catholics, we obey the Church's teaching and don't use contraception. Never have. If you use Natural Family Planning, the Church-approved method of regulating your fertility, you have to pay close attention to the woman's body. If you're doing it right, the wife should be eating healthier food (and if you're doing it right, the husband should be too, if only out of solidarity)."I might add that if you're doing it right you won't expose your wife to air pollution, which means you'll move to Montana. And once there you won't go out of doors due to the possibility of bear attacks, which tend to interfere with a woman's cycle. And don't get me started on those damaging sun rays....Finally, if you're doing it right, you won't eat ice from fast food restaurants. (I know I won't be doing the latter any time soon!)
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One of the paragraphs in Randall Sullivan's "The Miracle Detective" that resonates with me lo these many months since reading it concerned the visionaries and how some were asked to become nuns, which they declined, presumably politely. I had known that before I started reading it, which had put me off Medjugorje: I had thought, "if they were really visited by the Blessed Mother, they'd be holier and would be priests and sisters." Eventually it dawned on me that that also applies to me - given all the graces I've received I should be holier. So that was no longer an obstacle in determining the truth of the apparation. But what also interests me is how there was no seeming repercussion from their turning down the Blessed Mother. It seems like at Fatima there would've been more of an ultimatum: become a religious that you might save your soul. Here at Medjugorje there is no use of threat or force. Which, in a way, makes their decision - as well as our more mundane ways of saying "no" to God - all the sadder.
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Our blogmother Amy Welborn is back from sweet Roma. I missed her. Sounds like a good time was had by all. One big surprise during my own visit to St. Peter's was how at Communion time the Italian nuns about pulled a "Who concert" by crashing in from the rows behind us; at least their enthusiasm in getting to the Lord is commendable.
Update: Got a email and it appears I left the impression that I think being a religious means you are more holy even though I actually think that the average mother of six is holier than most priests (to the extent you can even measure such a thing). My point was that the holiest individual is he/she who accepts God's calling, whether it be to the religious life or married life. If a visionary or two was called to be a religious and married, that makes the married state less holy for them, by definition. Vice-versa also applies.
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