Believe it?  A researcher says that your baby learns how to lie to you at 6 months old, initially by crying when nothing is wrong to see what will happen.  Then it evolves from there.  Certainly, I have seen my two-year-old being deliberately deceptive - if she goes into another room and is doing something she knows she shouldn’t be doing, she immediately changes activities when I walk into the room. Or, when she’s loading up a diaper but is too busy playing to have it changed, she denies having filled her pants.

For a baby of 6 months, though, I wonder if it’s so much being deceptive as it is checking to see if mommy’s still there even though baby can’t see her.  I have a hard time believing it’s deliberate deception at that early an age.

 More!

This is interesting.  A few Episcopal bishops/meteorological experts have stated that God sends floods for two reasons: disrespect for the planet and decadent lifestyles.

Now, the idea of moral outrage coming from an Anglican is pretty interesting in and of itself.  But to suggest that flooding is caused by anything other than a lot of rain and inadequate drainage is rather disturbing from the standpoint of that whole covenant thing God had with Noah - that He wouldn’t destroy the earth by flooding again.

Check it out! 

This is interesting.  Coming soon will be a papal letter from B16 to the Catholics of China.  The Communist government has told Chinese priests and laity to react to the letter with calmness, no matter what it says.

HONG KONG (CNS) — Chinese government officials told about 80 Chinese Catholic bishops, priests and lay Catholics called to a late-June meeting to receive an imminent pastoral letter from Pope Benedict XVI “with calmness.”

…

The meeting’s main agenda was to discuss a series of celebrations in July to mark the 50th anniversary of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. Church sources told UCA News that the participants discussed June 29 how the church could strengthen its development, especially how the patriotic association could better fulfill a bridging and bonding function between the church and the government.

One source said most participants expressed a hope that the papal letter would be beneficial to the church’s relations with the government and society in China and would also promote the unity of the registered and unregistered communities within the country’s Catholic Church. The bishops who attended the Beijing meeting have registered with the government.

Get it?  The Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association is the communist party’s religious wing, trying to convince the citizenry that if they “register” then they’ll be able to participate in the Catholic Church (as approved by the government) without persecution.  Understandably, some folks have chosen not to register. Rather disturbing though, is

When China began suppressing the church in the late 1950s, it established the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, whose members initially were asked to reject ties with the Vatican. Many of the Catholics who joined indicated they chose to cooperate with the government and work within its restrictions, but remained loyal to the Vatican. Today, most bishops ordained with government approval but without papal approval have quietly had their jurisdiction legitimized by the Holy See.

Wonder what the letter will say?  If it’s anything like some of B16’s other statements, perhaps it’s a total rejection of the patriotic assocation.  We shall see.

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So as I understand it, on 7/7/7 we’ll get word from Rome that the Tridentine Mass is to be promoted and offered more freely in dioceses throughout the world.  Personally, I would try out a Tridentine Mass, but I am not sure how well it would work for me simply because I am not sure how well I could deal with the parts of it that are done in Latin, now that I am used to mass in the vernacular.

The most fun to be had here is with the stupid comments from the MSM about how this will take us back to Pre Vat. II days and ways of thinking, that it’s a blow to women’s rights and “progressive” agendas created out of the spirit of Vat II.  It will be interesting indeed to see what happens.

 The Curt Jester has a great set of stupid statements from the MSM about the Motu Proprio…simply pick six-eight of them and you’ve got a typical MSM story.

This is interesting - a brief from CNS:

WESTFIELD, Mass. (CNS) — July will be a big month for Harry Potter fans and Father Michael Bernier, parochial vicar at St. Mary Parish in Westfield, proudly counts himself among the myriad of Potter devotees. In fact, he described himself as a “Pottermaniac” at a talk he gave in May about God and Harry Potter. And he, like millions more, is looking forward to July 21 when the seventh and final book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” is released and July 13 when the fifth movie, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” premieres. Father Bernier told those gathered for his talk at St. Mary High School that Christians should not fear this devotion to stories about a boy wizard. “On the surface level it does sound suspect and does raise red flags,” he said. However, he said the magic in Harry Potter is not sorcery. “I happen to be one of the people who believes that there’s a great deal of Christian imagery and symbolism in the books. And I think it answers, at least in parts, a longing that we have for Christ,” he said.

The only problem I see with this is that the anti-Catholic folks will use it as an opportunity to say “see, Catholics are really pagans” or something nutty like that.

Y’all know I’m a La Leche League dad if you’ve been reading for a while.  Caroline doesn’t receive physical punishment from us, and she won’t (except in extreme cases, and my wife doesn’t agree on that stipulation.)  Gerald over at The Cafeteria is Closed has now posted asking for input regarding how we discipline our kids.  Remember that Gerald’s recently married and has no kids yet…2 kid-related posts in a day sure makes me wonder, but alas, he denies it.

To clarify a little more on the LLL principle for discipline:  LLL stresses that a key part of parenting is “loving guidance.”  Strict physical disciplinarians are of course paying perhaps too much attention to the word guidance.  On the other side of the spectrum you have the parents who want to be their kids’ best friends, and let them get away with anything and everything, sitting and smiling at their precocious youngster while he drives everyone else in the room up the wall - they are paying too much attention to the word loving, but no guidance is going on.  Loving guidance means shaping the child’s behavior while not reacting violently in the heat of the moment - responding to the negative behavior rather than the anger you’re feeling as a result of the negative behavior.   That said, I do believe that when a child is out of control and being belligerent, endangering himself or someone else, etc., and there’s not any other way to get the situation under control, that is when physical discipline could be appropriate.

The thing is, I have seen several kids whose parents are very strict, always chastising, physically removing their children from a situation rather than guiding them verbally - and those kids are just as out of control as the ones whose parents sit around and let them do whatever.

Gerald has a great little post up talking about his preconceptions about having kids…and then he asks several questions about how our lives changed when we had kids.  Go on by and read others’ comments and add some of your own!

Check it out! 

This is a crosspost of mine from over at Catholic Dads. I posted this last night and a couple of my fellow Catholic Dads as well as some moms for good measure have gotten started discussing the efficacy of nursing past toddlerhood. Not a direction I planned for the post to go, but if you’re interested, please check out the combox!

My lovely and gracious wife alerted me to this, so I decided to throw a post up about it.

For those of you whose kids were born in the hospital, and I know that’s most of us, you probably remember receiving a “free” sample bag from one of the major baby formula companies. Nice bag, equipped to carry bottles, and even came with a couple of free samples of formula.

Now, ignoring the point about Nestle’s repeated patently evil actions in 3rd world countries regarding formula, we all know that this is an economics game. The formula companies give hospitals monetary kickbacks as well as reduced price formula for use in the NICU, in return for the hospitals giving everyone one of these bags. I’m of the opinion (and science supports me) that breastmilk is the far superior food for newborns, and that physical and emotional health of both mom and baby are substantially enhanced by breastfeeding as long as possible (in my case, my 2-year-old continues to nurse, albeit briefly, even as my wife is pregnant with another.) Conversely, physical and mental health of mother and baby are compromised by the use of inferior product - formula - as the primary means of sustenance.

Still, the bags are being handed out, and you have to figure that their availability is influencing new moms, at least to some degree. The response to this is a website called banthebags.org, a new website set up by concerned moms citing evidence that there’s just too much evidence that moms are in fact being influenced by these “free” samples. They’ve even been featured on NPR.

Not to be outdone, there’s now momsfeedingfreedom.com, which advocates for not banning the bags. It was set up in direct response to the banthebags movement. It’s all about how important it is for the bags to be distributed because not distributing them denies new moms adequate information and education about their options. The site pays lip service to the “breast is best” concept, but it ignores all sorts of scientific evidence and you can just tell it’s a pro-formula site. In fact, it’s sponsored by the International Formula Council. And yes, that means it stinks worse than formula spit-up. Out the window goes any appearance of being objective. The cool thing is, there is a blog on the site, and the majority of the comments are pro-breast and anti-formula.

So, Catholic Dads, as we know, breastfeeding is a key part of natural child spacing and therefore NFP…so if any of your wives are militant breastfeeders as my wife is, have them check out the above sites and include their two cents.

Disclaimer: I am a La Leche League Dad - I am unabashed in my support of breastfeeding mothers. I believe breastfeeding is far superior to anything else for babies. That said, I do understand there are rare situations where it just doesn’t work for one reason or other. I do not condemn anyone for their personal decisions. Rather, I condemn the aggressive marketing of the formula industry as well as the cultural mentalities that have made formula feeding so mainstream. Don’t string me up, please!

Courtest of the Financial Post,

The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling

Maybe, just maybe, we have to adapt and we can’t do a darn thing to control the climate.  Maybe.

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I had previously posted on this topic - a column in American “Catholic” magazine about how the Church should accept shacking up.  After I posted on it (having seen it over at the Catholic Dads blog) the rest of the Catholic blogosphere picked up on it.  The Curt Jester has this response from Archbishop Chaput of Denver:

…I believe in the intelligence and good will of the authors. I also believe that their argument is bafflingly naïve. If the Church, in her reflection on the Gospel, has always taught that sex outside marriage is morally wrong, then for the Church to now bless “nuptial cohabiters” amounts to colluding in sin. Ritualizing a sinful behavior, or calling it a nicer name, does not change its substance. The very last thing we need in a society already awash in confused sexuality is a strategy for accommodating it.

The greatest irony of the U.S. Catholic article comes in a comment by the authors that many young adults “cite confusion about Church teaching because Church leaders send mixed messages about sex, contraception, and divorce/annulment.” I very much agree. And one of the sources of that confusion might be Catholic publications, theologians and researchers who help feed it.

We need more support for marriage in society and the Church, not alternative arrangements. Cohabiting couples deserve the understanding and patience of the Catholic community, but above all they need to hear the Christian truth, persuasively offered, about the nature of marriage, the meaning of their sexuality and the importance of the family. We waste words and time when we focus on anything else.

Great to hear from the good Archbishop on this subject.  Just in case you had any doubt about the Church’s position…