In The Beginning….
As a scientist, a Ph.D. Molecular Biologist and Microbiologist, I rejoice in the knowledge and power that is at the disposal of my community. We have unlocked the deepest and most profound truths about the universe, from the macrocosmos to the microcosmos and beyond. We have conquered diseases once fatal, and have others on the run. We have genetically engineered crops and livestock that are more robust and yield greater quantity of food. We have truly fulfilled the mandate in Genesis to be fruitful, multiply and subdue the earth.
Along the way, we have lost something of ourselves as a race, something essential. The reductionism of the Twentieth Century has flashed back on us. We have come to see ourselves as less sacred, and therefore, less deserving of a unique dignity in all of creation. Science has become the ascendant religion of the West. Where the great monotheistic religions had humanity in relationship with God as their focus, Science reduces humanity to one more among a menagerie of species.
The purpose of this blog is to explore the lost human essence in the headlong embrace of reductionism, to promote the dialogue between Christian Anthropology and the sciences, primarily the Biological Sciences. Abortion, Euthanasia, Eugenics, Physician Assisted Suicide, all threaten human life on a scale never before imagined. There have been 1.8 BILLION abortions worldwide since the year of my birth, 1960. That’s one abortion for every 3.7 people walking the planet today. Where did we go so terribly wrong?
This blog will pursue the truth, wherever the truth leads. I invite the gentle reader to walk with me on the road of exploration. I am Roman Catholic, unapologetically so. I believe that much of what has been lost in human anthropology can be found in my Church’s documents, and in the scholarship of her sons and daughters. So too do I believe that my Protestant and Orthodox brothers and sisters, enlightened by the leading of the Holy Spirit, bring their very powerful witness to the truth, as do our elder brothers in faith, the Jews.
Indeed, pro-life is not the sole province of any one church or religion. We are all children of God, sharing the same dignity as such. Restoring that lost dignity is what this blog, and my life’s work is all about.
Welcome friend.
Hey Gerard,
I’ve been enjoying your comments over at Jill’s site and thought I’d come and visit your new “digs”.
I love it! The pictures declare the glory of Our Creator and it has a very clean, organized look.
Bravo.
I read a few of the pieces as well and found them very thought-provoking.
I’d like to blog myself. But if I did, how would I ever find the time to come back and visit your site? As it stands now, I already spend entirely too much time on Jill’s.
I can predict with some confidence that your site is going to seriously challenge my New Year’s resolution for more disciplined time management!
Keep up the good work!
Thanks Ed. I appreciate the feedback very much. And I’ve been enjoying your comments over at Jill’s as well. I’m new to blogging, but it’s pretty agreeable with me. Will you be at the March in January?
God Bless
I agree, excellent blog Gerard!
Nice blog, Gerard! Feliz Navidad!
Hi Gerard,
Peace and many blessings this Christmas to you and yours!
I will be bookmarking your blog as one of many I follow.
I have two blogs but since I was stalked on Jill’s site I don’t have them public.
I was trained as a scientist but am now in a different career. I enjoy your comments on Jill’s site and will read up on your blog.
Peace,
a friend
Great blog, Gerry! A Blessed Christmas season to you and your family! Hope you are all doing well and enjoying this most joy-filled season! Keep up the great work here!!!
Love,
Your friends in CT
Just discovered your blog… excellent! Keep up the good work.
Mac,
Thanks for the kind word. Having more fun than a human being ought to have
God Bless
Hi! I just discovered your blog through a link made in one of the facebook groups I joined which opposes the Reproductive Health Bill here in the Philippines. Great work on connecting science with pro-life issues! I really enjoy reading them, being a physician and a “scientist” as well.
Sadly, despite majority of Filipinos being Catholics, the contraceptive business is booming here. I think many people are put off when pro-lifers instinctively include purely religious views as their sole foundation for being pro-life.
Your blog will be a great help for those seeking to fully understand the many pro-life issues by including both science and your faith. It’s Faith and Reason in the flesh.
Keep it up!
Welcome to the human rights online revolution, Gerard! I saw your blog promoted on Jill Stanek’s.
With heroes like Lila Rose taking on Planned Parenthood, many people do not know that there are also some publicly funded state universities who are very aggressively pursuing abortion agendas as well, albeit very quietly.
As far as I know, ours is the only one in the country countering a university’s misinformation and in house abortion program:
http://uvalies.org/
Thanks for your activism.
Sean.
Dear Gerard,
My name is Andrew Haines, and I’m a cofounder of ProLife ProPatria (http://www.prolifepropatria.com), a bioethics and social/political science commentary site aimed at representing a pro-life position from the vantage point of natural law philosophy.
Given your history and expertise–and your passionate work with the pro-life movement–we would love if you’d take a look at our site and give us some feedback. Recently, we’ve been in touch with a number of Catholic thinkers (Drs Robert George, Patrick Lee, Francis Beckwith, Christian Brugger, et al.), some of whom have agreed to serve on our editorial board. In particular, we are looking to form relationships with biologists/scientists who would be able to guide us in the right direction on the less-theoretical side of things. If you would be interested in helping out in any way, we’d be happy to talk about it!
I hope we can be in touch; feel free to email me at andrew.m.haines@gmail.com anytime. Thanks in advance for your consideration.
Best,
Andrew
PS: If you email me your address, I’d be happy to sent a PDF of our organizational aims and objectives (mission, goals) for 2010.
Dr. Nadal,
What a wonderful letter. Thank you for writing it.
I noticed your avatar is the autism ribbon which
immediately caught my eye as a mom of an
autistic 7-year-old.
I read your bio, what kind of autism research are you doing?
AND did you see the HBO movie “Temple Grandin” recently? Very well done. I highly recommend it.
Anyway, keep up the great work on your blog.
Hello. I was looking for an email address to send you a pdf of a pamphlet on which I am co-author. I am a psychiatrist who has worked extensively with women who have had mental health problems related to abortion issues, and I thought you may be interested in what I have written. You can contact me privately at martha.shuping@gmail.com if you would like to see a copy.
I don’t have the pamphlet posted at my website yet and may not for a while. The pamphlet is adapted from an article titled Big Girls Do Cry by Martha Shuping M.D. and Chris Gacek which was published in Townhall Magazine in Feb. of 2009, and that is able to accessed through my website.
To see Big Girls Do Cry, go to http://www.rachelnetwork.org then click “in the news” and you should be able to access the pdf of the article if interested.
Many people are coming to understand that women and men experience grief and loss after an abortion. But many people are unaware of the numerous statistically significant studies that show that abortion is a risk factor for more than a dozen different psychiatric disorders, or that many women are aborting wanted babies because of pressure from others, or lack of support for the choice to have their baby.
I think the article and the pamphlet show a picture of abortion that is very different from what most people realize. Abortion has very little to do with women making a “choice.” The lack of information, the lack of genuine counseling, and the degree of pressure brought to bear are astounding. The mental health sequelae are devasting to many women and men.
For further information related to some of the research, see also http://www.standapart.org in addition to the Rachel Network website.
I am a weekly lurker on Jill Stanek’s blog, and I always appreciate your knowledge and wisdom. I direct a prolife pregnancy ministry…thought I would peek at your blog. I find blessings in the writings of people like you!!
Gerard, I just popped over from Rod Dreher’s site, where you’d left a link in a combox. Have always enjoyed your comments there, and am looking forward to following your blog. I really like what I see here! You’re doing important work. Thank you!
Dr. Gerard,
I am a new visitor on your site who found you while looking for more discussion regarding the excommunication of Sr. McBride in Phoenix. Your clarity about that event is much appreciated by this Catholic.
In your bio, you mentioned that you and your wife homeschool your children, yet you have no blog posts yet about that decision and about how it is going.
Please consider doing so. I’m one reader who is interested and I’d guess there are others. I’ve considered home schooling countless times and have friends who’ve chosen that option, but have so far continued with institutional schools and home supplementation because I’ve been a little reluctant to remove my child to an environment where she is the only student.
Background: My husband and I have a single child. We have tried both public and private school options and been fairly disappointed with the constructivist pedagogy and the promotion of progressive, secular values at both. Shoring up the weaknesses, in both coursework and culture, has been alot of work, but rewarding too.
Next year, she will enter a Catholic high school with a strong sense of community and a recently renewed determination to stay true to Catholic identity. Given that our experience here in the Pacific Northwest has been that “Catholic identity” can mean different things to different Catholics, we are going in with eyes wide open and ears to the ground and the hope that what we find there resonates with our own beliefs and values.
Hello, Diane. Just saw your post today. I homeschooled my own daughter from 4th grade through high school graduation, and I think homeschooling is a wonderful option. Unfortunately many people hesitate to try it based on many misconceptions.
If you want to talk to other parents of high school students who are successfully homeschooling, I have a yahoogroup with hundreds of members from all over the country, where you would be welcome to join, read the posts and ask questions.
The link to this particular email list is
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conservativehs2c/ and you do have to be a member to read the posts and ask questions, but it’s easy to join.
I was at one time on an email list that included college admissions officers and also many parents of homeschooled high school students. We could ask the admissions officers questions, but any time a parent just wanted to offer advice or talk to another parent, that was annoying to the admissions officers, so I started a list to foster conversations. That was the “original” homeschool to college list, homeschool2college at yahoogroups.com.
But then some of us realized that there were people on that list that don’t share the same values and there was a need for a place where conservative parents of traditional relgious faith could discuss homeschooling through high school and the transition to college, including college prep curricula, service hours, college applications, scholarship applications, or anything related to that whole process of getting homeschooled kids through high school and into college.
At the local level, your student has so many opportunities. During middle school and high school, my daughter was in small group of friends, originally about a dozen but later only four, who shared a Spanish tutor. The Spanish tutor had been a missionary to a Spanish speaking country, and also had taught Spanish at community college, so she was superb, and my daughter loved her. We all chipped in to pay part of the fee, and normally met for about a 2 hour block once a week working through a standard textbook.
Here in NC, from age 16 onward, the local community colleges allow dual enrollment for homeschooled students who can take two free classes every semester, earning high school and college credit at the same time, so that by the time they finish high school, they may already have completed a whole year of college little by little over their junior and senior years of high school.
Also, a local private school offers Chemistry classes wth lab after hours, and other sciences and foreign languages, so that in the late afternoon when students have gone home, homeschooled students can take advantage of a state of the art chemistry lab and other resources.
There is no limit to what you can do in high school short of your own creativity and your student’s interests. My daughter was able to participate in a lot of challenging ballet opportunities that would not have been possible if she had been in public schools.
I also at one time started up a fine-arts academy where homeschooled students of all ages had music, art, and drama with other students of a similar level. My daughter participated in some plays through this group, and had three years of classical guitar lessons with her friends, taught by teachers who also taught at local colleges.
Just because you “homeschool” doesn’t mean that every day of her life your daughter will be alone, as in a solitary prison cell. Chances are, she’ll get through her basic course work more quickly because there will not be time wasted in changing classes, going to the locker, taking attendance, time off for a pep rally or school assembly, time for Sally to find the right page, time for teacher to berate Joe for not doing his homework, etc.
And with the extra time, there is plenty of opportunity to puruse individual interests or extracurriculars.
But even the main courses can certainly be facilitated by a tutor in a group setting. State of NC makes the point that in a “homeschool” the courses should be taught “at home.” Fine. As the principal, I bought the Spanish book, and I made sure my daughter worked through the Spanish assignments. But there is no law anywhere that a student can’t have a tutor, and it worked well for us to send her off to her friend’s house with the tutor for Spanish practice. She learned a lot and enjoyed it.
She also got to do some international field trips as part of her high school, including tagging along on a business trip with her father who is a watchmaker. Her dad was taking a course in the Swiss method of watch repair, and at 14, she got to take the course alongside her dad, and then travel around to visit watch factories and watch museums in between a few days sightseeing in the Alps. Later, she visited Ireland and helped at a couple of different pro-life events.
Homeschoolers do so many fun, amazing things, nobody has time to be lonely. And I haven’t seen homeschoolers missing out on much.
Martha Shuping