The Pope, The Rabbi and Condoms

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During his recent African trip, Pope Benedict XVI said that the distribution of condoms would not resolve the AIDS problem.  The Pope has made it clear that abstinence is going to be the best way to fight AIDS.

Google “Pope” and “condoms,” and you’ll never run out of reading material excoriating the man for his observation and opinion.  Many health advocates have gone ballistic in their criticism of his comments.  They feel it is one thing to promote abstinence as part of the Catholic religion, but that it is an entirely different thing to preach it to the world.

On a person-by-person basis, wearing a condom does, of course, offer some protection against contracting various venereal diseases and (of course) unwanted pregnancy.  It is also true that condoms sometimes break, slip, or are put on incorrectly (taut to the very end).  Everything has its limitations…except abstinence.

I remember listening to a rabbi describing a situation that occurred to his kosher family.  His 7 year old child was invited to a birthday party for a classmate at one of those fast-food hamburger establishments.  When he came to pick up his child at the end of the party, one of the mothers – clearly annoyed – chastised him for the pain he caused his son.  “All the children had hamburgers, chicken nuggets, french fries and dessert, and your little boy had to sit there and eat none of it.  Imagine how terrible your son must have felt?  How could you do this to him?  Food is food.  There is nothing sinful about food.  What you are doing to him is just cruel.”  Just about at the end of her tirade, his son bounded up to him, gave him a huge hug around the waist, and said “I had a great time.  This was a fun party.”

The woman blanched and walked away.  The rabbi followed her and gently told her the following:  animals will eat whatever is around, even if it will make them unhealthy.  Humans are to rise above animals and become masters of their urges.  Imagine my son in a dorm room where harmful illicit drugs are being passed about.  We already know that peer pressure and urges will not force him to relent and give in to the impulse.  Learning at his early age to control impulse and desire is not a harmful trait – many times, it might be a life-saving one.  Look at him.  He enjoyed the company of your son and the rest of the children without giving up his values.  He looks happy and satisfied.  We really need to bring up our children to be masters of their instincts, not slaves to them, don’t you think?
The woman scowled, but listened to him.

Yes, in any one instance, a condom could protect, but in the overall scheme of humanity, why do so many people wish to push away the enormous protective power of moral values?

When the Pope suggests that human beings are best off saving their sexual passion for the stability of a covenant of marriage, he is making a statement that the act of sexuality is elevated by the context, and ultimately protects both man and woman from a myriad of hurtful consequences from venereal diseases to unwanted pregnancies (complete with abortions, abandonment, single-parenthood, and homelessness to name a few).

The naysayers all have one thing in common:  they refuse to want, believe or accept that human beings can commit to a higher spiritual state of thought and behavior.  The Pope believes in us more than that.

I am not Catholic, so this is no knee-jerk defense of my spiritual leader.  The truth is that he is simply correct and too many people don’t want to hear it, because they want to live lives unfettered by rules.  It is sad that they don’t realize that this makes them a slave to animal impulse versus a master of human potential.

Endurance, Not Therapy, Is The Answer to Some of Life’s Challenges

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How did we as a people get so “knee jerk” about going into therapy every time we face a challenge or disappointment?

One caller to my radio program was having her three year old son tested for muscular dystrophy, a devastating illness, and the results wouldn’t be coming for two weeks.  She wanted to know how to “cope” with the two week wait.  I told her that she was simply going to feel stressed and scared – that was normal, and was to be “endured.”  She, like many others realizing they had to feel some emotional pain for a while, asked if she should go into therapy!

I asked her what she thought the folks who blazed the trail west in covered wagons did when people died of illness or accident, or if the Indians attacked or food got scarce?  Did they all line up in front of a therapist’s tent to express their pain and look for a magic cure to get through the sometimes unpleasant realities of life, or did they pray, hold onto each other and ultimately….endure?

She laughed, and said, “I see what you mean.”

We are sturdier creatures than we take credit for.  I am a licensed therapist, and there are, indeed, situations in which individuals cannot endure, due to a distinct compromise in a person’s ability to be rational, such as mental illness or severe trauma.  In these situations, I refer people to mental health professionals. 

But most things in life that we must deal with often are best served with some love, some advice, some prayer, and an acknowledgment that sometimes life just doesn’t feel good for a while.

I have told innumerable callers that there is no quick fix for a bad situation – and sometimes, there is no “fix” at all.  I tell them also to turn to each other (family and friends), rather than turn on each other with resentment, frustration, or anger.

Much of life must be endured.  There is still always beauty, such as seeing the flowers among the fertilizer, and there is always light (hope and alternatives).

Raising Children With Religion

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My parents came from different religions, and, as often happens in “mixed” marriages, I was raised with no strong religious affiliation. So when I get asked whether or not moral and ethical kids can be raised without religion, I have a response that is both professional and very personal:

Or watch other videos at youtube.com/DrLaura

The God Wars

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Ads proclaiming, “Why believe in a god?  Just be good for goodness’ sake” will appear on Washington D.C., buses starting this week and running through December.  The American Humanist Association recently announced the controversial $40,000 holiday campaign.

Fred Edwords, spokesman for the humanist group told the Associated Press: “Our reason for doing it during the holidays is there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion.”

No matter what side of the Christmas and God wars you may be on, that is one lame excuse for challenging the majority of people in the United States who are “believers” (92% according a poll by the Pew Research Center).

 I am Jewish and have never felt “alone” because the end-of-the-year holiday event of the country was “Christian”; Christmas is a lovely spectacle no matter what your beliefs, and for those who are seriously Christian, it is additionally a sacred time.

Last month, the British Humanist Association upped the ante with their bus sign campaign, which said:  “There’s probably no God.  Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”  At least the American version still holds to the idea of doing good, while the British version is like letting kids go wild in a candy store claiming there are no such things as cavities or obesity.
    
American Family Association president, Tim Wildmon, calls the American Humanist’s ad, “…stupid.  How do we define ‘good’ if we don’t believe in God?  God in his word, the Bible, tells us what’s good and bad and right and wrong.  If we are each ourselves defining what’s good, it’s going to be a crazy world.”

Don Feder, editor of the “Boycott The New York Times” website, demanded equal space in the New York Times for the display of religious symbols as he perceives the paper to have a “relentless drive to secularize society.”

Feder writes: “The New York Times gives the game away when it insists that public property ‘must be open to all religions on an equal basis – or open to none at all.’  In other words, a town that chooses to display the Ten Commandments – which are sacred to 90% of the American people and an integral part of our nation’s heritage – has to give equal space to every other faith and New Age sect that’s out there.  In reality, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment was intended to prohibit a state church, like the Church of England.
 
“If the Founders thought giving one religion preference was odious, why was Congress’s first official act to hire a Christian chaplain?  And why did the first Congress appropriate sums of money for Christian missionaries to the Indian tribes?  What about ‘In God We Trust’ on our currency and ‘One Nation under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance – which clearly give preference to Judeo- Christian tradition over Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Summunism?”

To read more from Don Feder’s point of view: www.boycottnyt.com and www.aim.org.

Bill Maher’s “Religulous”

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Newark, New Jersey’s Roman Catholic archbishop, John Myers,  is upset that part of Bill Maher’s movie, Religulous (a combination of the words “religion” and “ridiculous”), was filmed at a Bergen County parish under false pretenses.  Maher told the parish’s Very Reverend Charles Grandstrand that he wanted to film his Jewish mother there, because the church was such a big part of her life.  His father was a Catholic.  Maher told the parish folks that the movie he was making would be called A Spiritual Journey.

Recently, during his appearance on Larry King’s CNN program to promote his activities, Maher said: “This is funny.  Religion accusing me of deception.   Religion, the greatest scam in the history of the world…selling the invisible product for thousands of years, accusing us of deception?  [he laughs]  We don’t lie to people.   What we didn’t tell people [i.e., when he was producing the movie] was that it was me doing the interview.  They didn’t ask, and we didn’t feel an obligation to tell them.”

This is such hypocrisy that I can hardly type.  Hypocrisy, for those who use it as a daily epithet towards somebody whose point of view they simply don’t like, is a behavior of espousing and living in counterpoint.  He accuses religious folks of lying about the divine and about faith, while he lies to people to use and embarrass them.  And this, my friends, gets you a television show, after losing another one for calling the September 11 terrorists braver than Americans.