My Daily Domestic Diigolet 08/01/2008

It is also of very great importance that the couple prepare for marriage by living the state of grace. Cohabiting couples should be gently but clearly told that their situation is not conducive to an adequate preparation for a Catholic wedding. Cohabitation also risks the future stability of their life together, as has been shown by both pastoral experience and formal scientific studies.

So, what’s the lesson here?

When the catechists are uncatechized and/or idiots, it doesn’t matter where you have moved the deck chairs. The ship is still going down.

In the meantime, the government is adopting a softer tone in its propaganda. The red characters painted on village walls throughout the countryside have evolved from the 1980s slogan YOU BEAT IT OUT! YOU CAN MAKE IT FALL OUT! YOU CAN ABORT IT! BUT YOU CANNOT GIVE BIRTH TO IT! Now they read: IMPLEMENT FAMILY PLANNING FOR THE GOOD OF ALL CITIZENS. And, recently, the government added BOYS AND GIRLS ARE BOTH TREASURES. In 2003, it unveiled the Care For Girls program, which gives stipends to parents of girls in some provinces.But, as Chinese couples make more money, fertility is naturally declining– meaning that today’s bachelors will form an even larger proportion of China’s future population than officials expect. Wang Feng, a sociologist at the University of California-Irvine who’s part of a group of scholars advocating phasing out the one-child policy, says the outlook is grim: “Each successive birth cohort is going to be smaller. When younger cohorts get smaller, you have fewer females. It’s a double whammy.”

In the interest of integrity in reporting here is a better nuanced version of the same story. “The pope is going to rescind the special indult that allowed people a different way to receive Communion from that which is normative.” This is not a “return to Pre-Vatican II” ways but what has always been the preferred and normative way to receive communion. Even in the United States it is by special indult that we are permitted to receive Communion in the hand. Personally I have no problem with it unless someone does not have full use of both hands and both arms. However I find it neglectful that we teach our children that there is only one way to receive, and as we are want to do, we usually teach them the secondary method as the only way to go.