The Disappearance of Down Syndrome

Originally posted on Facebook, June 28, 2008.

If you can recognize the characteristic physical features associated with Down Syndrome (DS), try this experiment: Next time you're out in a crowd, take a look around and count how many folks with DS you can identify. How many? How old?

Chances are you wont see many, and the ones you see will be well into their 30s and 40s or beyond—an observation that would be consistent with documented demographic realities.

Why is this? What happened in the early '70s that so radically decreased the number of babies born with DS? Was there some kind of fantastic medical discovery back then that aided the treatment of this condition in the womb?

Guess again.

In a beautiful yet discomforting piece in the Wall Street Journal recently ("A Life Worth Living," 6/27/2008), Christine Rosen alludes to the real reason:

Between 80% and 90% of women who find out they are carrying a child with the chromosomal abnormality (which can be tested using amniocentesis) choose to abort. A Harvard medical student who surveyed 1,000 women who were pregnant with Down Syndrome babies reported that many were urged by their doctors to terminate their pregnancies; one woman's physician told her that her child would "never be able to read, write or count change." This at a time when new developments in medicine have nearly doubled the average life span of people who have the condition to 49 from 25 years.

So, it wasn't a medical advance that led to fewer babies born with DS, but rather the Supreme Court's decision in 1973 to make abortion legal in all 50 states. In other words, we're eliminating a disorder by eliminating the patient.

All abortions are abominable crimes, but killing preborn babies because they are viewed as "defective" is particularly revolting—especially when it becomes the norm. Again, Christine Rosen:

As a culture, we have made what Amy Laura Hall of Duke University Divinity School calls a "democratic calculus of worth" regarding Down Syndrome. And that calculus has resulted in a society hostile to people who refuse to make the culturally acceptable choice of ridding themselves of a disabled child before she is born.

Can we continue to call "civilized" a society that tolerates, protects, and even promotes this heinous practice? Or has our "teetering on the edge of collapse" finally shifted into a moral free fall?

Pray for an end to abortion. Work for its end. Protest accordingly. Vote accordingly.

And when you see a baby with DS say a prayer of thanks. That baby's very existence means that we haven't hit rock bottom just yet.

The Fog Clears

“I’ll crush you like a bug,” the wrestler snarled, twisting his fist around slowly and deliberately.

Opposite him, Joe “Rip Dawg” Merton considered the threat and snarled back.

A lunge, a blow to the solar plexus, and an epiphany: “I am a bug,” murmured Rip Dawg, as he crumbled serenely to the mat.


A 55 Fiction submission to Bethel's Crossings literary magazine, March 16, 2010.

St. Fidelis and the Cathedral of the Plains

The stretch of I-70 across Kansas can be a challenge to the sleep deprived, but about halfway across the state there’s a jewel awaiting those who make the trip: The “Cathedral of the Plains.”

When I visited it the first time, I thought I’d enjoy a brief respite at a simple country church. I was wrong on two counts: There’s nothing simple about the Cathedral of the Plains, and my short respite turned into a prolonged prayerful pause—almost a roadside retreat.

The “cathedral” is actually St. Fidelis Church, a parish served by Capuchin Franciscans in the small town of Victoria (pop. 1,231 at last count). Victoria started as an English and Scottish settlement named for the queen back in the late 1800s, but Russian immigrant farmers of German descent took it over, bringing with them their devout Catholic faith and a passion for rich liturgical worship.

The faithful constructed a series of churches culminating in an unprecedented communal project: a church to rival the magnificent edifices the farmers had left behind in Europe. Urged on by their Capuchin pastor, every Catholic from the surrounding area contributed. They quarried limestone several miles south and transported it to the site by wagon. Workmen used hand tools to cut and shape the stones, and elaborate rope-and-pulley systems to set them in place.

The worksite was a constant hive of activity, and the busy farmers helped out between planting, harvesting, and chores. When completed in 1911 after three years’ work, St. Fidelis Church was one of the largest churches west of the Mississippi—220 feet long, with twin towers topping out at 141 feet each. The enormous Romanesque structure acquired its “Cathedral of the Plains” moniker from the U.S. statesman William Jennings Bryan after he visited it in 1912. And just recently, the church acquired another, more prestigious honor when it was designated a minor basilica by the Vatican.

And why St. Fidelis? Fidelis was the 17th-century Capuchin itinerant preacher who implored the Calvinist citizenry of Austria to return to the true faith. He was killed, of course, and therein lies the hook that captured the imaginations of the Kansas transplants. Just as St. Fidelis had surrendered all to make Christ known, the people of Victoria had truly invested their lives in erecting their monument of faith.

And it isn’t just a monument, but also a sign of the Body of Christ—like all church buildings. Like the Church herself. “Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord,” St. Paul writes to the Ephesians, of the whole Church. “In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (2.21-22).

Which is why some churches have feast days: They really do point us to Jesus. The Franciscan Cathedral of the Plains is no exception.

A version of this story was originally published in Franciscan Way, Franciscan University of Steubenville. 

Student Loan Crisis: Solved!

Originally posted on Facebook, July 16, 2013. 

Sounds like Mayor Bloomberg has been eavesdropping on Becker family dinner discussions. Here's businessman Eric Roper in the Wall Street Journal yesterday:

New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg got it right the other day when he encouraged kids to think about forgoing college and becoming plumbers instead. Not everyone needs to go to college.

So true, and it doesn't mean consigning yourself to an attenuated intellectual life or blinkered prejudice—a point made by Will Hunting long ago:

The sad thing about a guy like you, is in about 50 years you’re gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on an education you coulda' got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library.

Plus, plumbers really help people—and the industrious ones go on to create jobs for others. More from Roper:

After all, what's wrong with plunging those toilets? You get good at the job, do it for a few years, and maybe you open your own plumbing business and hire people to work for you. 

So, a decent, honorable job that helps people and allows you to support yourself and your family. At night, you can read all the Kierkegaard and Spinoza and Nabokov you want—for free! Maybe no degrees or letters after your name, and almost certainly no fame or great fortune.

But you'd have the satisfaction of being a good plumber, serving your customers well, and honoring God through your hard work and craftsmanship. As Robert Bolt's Thomas More offered in A Man for All Seasons, "Not a bad public, that."  

__________________________________

On Her Sixth Birthday

"Nank you," she says, and "Her is
Upstairs" – endearing utterance
Doomed to extinction.

Professionals will have their way
In time, but not tonight! For
Now, her is heavy on my lap,

Safe, as we read a book
Falteringly, together,
Daddy and daughter.
Nank you.

Virginia Dale, February 29, 2012

Easter Meditation

The other day, the kids were watching Fly Away Home—a great, underrated movie. Like all good movies, like all true stories, it’s about sin and salvation; about love, life, and death; about redemption, sacrifice, risk, and hope.

And it’s about fatherhood. As soon as I heard the main theme by Mary Chapin Carpenter, I rushed in to catch the film’s end, and I burst into tears. It’s a father’s worst nightmare and greatest joy—his little girl growing up, leaving his protective care, launching, flying, going away on her own. My daughters aren’t rescuing geese and flying solo over a continent, but they’re growing up, just like Amy in the movie.   

As many of you know, my daughter Joan is preparing to go to Oxford this summer. It’s a great opportunity, and I’m fiercely proud of her, but I’m terrified. What was I thinking when I said she could go if she got the scholarship? Shouldn’t I have known that she’d get it? Shouldn’t I have known that she’d find a way?   

Easter is like that I think. We bury Jesus and think, “Well, that’s done,” and we go about our business—what were we thinking? He bursts forth, he undoes our complacency, he pummels our sloth, he calls us to be martyrs, saints, and heroes—scandalous! Outrageous! Crazy talk!    

But he is relentless—like kids growing up. You’re blessed with your first child—sometimes, like us, when you’re still getting used to being married—and you have no idea what you’re doing. You stumble along, God blesses you with more children, you do the best you can, and they grow up. They grow up even when you’re not ready for them to grow up—when you’re just beginning to think that you might be getting the hang of it all, they’re driving and dating and going to Oxford.    

God, watch over them as they fly away. 
_________________________________________________

Originally posted on Facebook, April 9, 2012.

Let’s Get Radical: Has the Catholic Worker Movement Betrayed Its Founders?

Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin

Liberals are too liberal to be radicals. To be a radical is to go to the roots. Liberals don’t go to the roots; they only scratch the surface. The only way to go to the roots is to bring religion into education, into politics, into business.

To bring religion into the profane is the best way to take profanity out of the profane. To take profanity out of the profane is to bring sanity into the profane. Because we aim to do just that we like to be called radicals.

~ Peter Maurin

Read more...