STUFF WE SHOULDN'T BE DOING IN THE FIRST PLACE

As published online in the Post

I get it. I get it that some Christian observers of Lent (including the pope) want certain traditional Lenten practices, such as fasting and abstinence, to be less about giving up food and more about giving up “not-nice” behaviors.

“Eat whatever you want for Lent,” the pope is alleged to have said in a popular social media meme, “the sacrifice is not in the stomach, but in the heart.” 

The pope, or at least the meme, continues: “They refrain from eating meat, but don’t talk to their siblings or relatives, don’t visit their parents or bother to attend to them, don’t share food with the needy…a good barbecue or beef stew won’t make you a bad person, just like a fish fillet won’t make you a saint.”

Another popular Lenten meme plays off the traditional practice of “giving something up for Lent.” It recommends that we give up complaining, pessimism, harsh judgements, worry, hatred, and the like, recommendations that appear to harbor - like the pope’s meme - a belittling of traditional fasting and abstinence.

I’m all for all of the above, but not as acts of Lenten self-denial. I’m for all of the above because it’s stuff we shouldn’t be doing in the first place. 

Fasting and abstinence during penitential religious seasons is about denying oneself that which is a normal good: like food, like sleep, like fellowship. This other stuff isn’t a good to deny oneself, it’s a bad we shouldn’t be doing at all. 

Plus there is the obvious problem that if you give this stuff up for Lent or commit to being nice to your parents for forty days, what are you going to do when Lent is over? Go back to your sinful and hurtful ways?

I know that’s not what the conjurers of these “recommendations” mean, but it’s what’s implied. And we have to be extra careful in these catechetically illiterate days not to send wrong messages via good intentions and further pave the road to hell.

Moreover, I can’t help but be suspicious that certain purveyors of these types of alternate Lenten practices are really looking for an excuse not to actually fast and abstain. Giving up food hurts. It hurts physically. And it’s supposed to. 

It’s supposed to turn us inward and bring us face to face with our fragile mortality, our human helplessness - the fact that we are, in the end, save for our immortal souls, nothing but ashes and dust, which is why Lent begins with ashes and dust and ends in a tomb.

And once you leave the traditional road of fasting and abstinence and start substituting other stuff, you open the doors for the crazy. One nationally-known Catholic cleric recommended that we give up carbon for Lent. Yah, carbon. Not out of love for God but for love of “the planet.” 

In the end, the traditional Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are not about anything other than fastening ourselves to the Cross of Christ for no reason other than love for Him. All good things will follow. 

Meanwhile, let’s stop doing the bad stuff we shouldn’t be doing in the first place, not just for Lent, but forever. 

UPDATE ON FATHER RICHARDS

 (posted by frenchie)

According to a reliable source within the Archdiocese of Detroit, Fr Ron Richards has been liacized. At this time, it is not clear if Mr Ron Richards has been laicized at his request or for not abiding to his vows.

Hopefully we should be able to keep you abreast of this development. A few months back I wrote several columns to address this issue, after we had been contacted by parishioners of then Fr R Richards. 

I had noted the many psychological issues related to Mr Richards while he was de Facto leading our Archdiocese, and the troubling decisions he took in the process.

Lets pray that he can find peace and redemption

THE ROT ON THE INSIDE

 (Posted by Frenchie.)

Not long after the end of Vatican II, Pope Paul VI, made is now famous remark in 1972 : " Satan's smoke has made its way into the Temple of God through some cracks". The Pope had been made aware in 1974 of a very grave danger, after evidences were presented by two cardinals Dino Staffa and Silvio Oddi:  which alleged the infiltration of the Vatican by a cabal of undercover Free Masons. Faced by this harsh reality, in 1975 he gave the French Canadian Archbishop Gagnon a pontifical visitation, with the goal to identify and quantify the threat, in a report. The Archbishop started his task with zeal, helped by a cadre of devout clerics. His thorough investigation concluded in 1978, also known as the year of the three Popes. 

LETTER FROM STEPHEN MARTINEZ TO SPEAKER THERESE TERLAJE RE BILL NO. 162-37

February 19, 2024

Speaker Therese M. Terlaje

Guam Congress Building

Hagatna, Guam

senatorterlajeguam@gmail.com

Dear Speaker Terlaje:

Bill No. 162-37 is deceitful and a lie and needs to be rejected.

The first sentence of page two says: “It is essential to recognize that women and pregnant individuals have the right to make informed decisions about their own bodies, including the option to terminate a pregnancy.”

It is deceitful to say “terminate a pregnancy” without also adding “…and kill the living child inside her.” For the fact is, it is not just the woman’s body involved in every pregnancy. There is also another living, breathing body of a child within the pregnant woman. To allow a woman to “terminate a pregnancy” is to allow one human the right to terminate the life of another human. Yet the proposed bill ignores this fact all together. If this is the intent of the bill sponsors, to grant a woman the right to determine the fate of another human being, then the bill should be amended to clearly state this reality.

It is even more deceitful, rising to the status of a lie, to say the intent is to allow a woman to “make informed decisions”. Section 2 removes the 24 hour informational requirement, which a previous legislature found was essential to allow the woman ample time to weigh the critical decision she will make on another human beings’ life or death. But even more contrary to the stated intent of this bill, the authors spend most of their effort to eliminate vital information  which is currently required by law. They propose to strike the age and anatomical features and development of the child, but desire only to retain the risks to the mother should they choose to not abort the child. Such an imbalanced approach to this grave decision is completely contrary to the stated intent of an informed decision. Section 3 of the current law advises the mother of various medical and public assistance available to both the mother and the child, but the authors of this bill want to repeal this section in its’ entirety. And Section 4 provides information in a written form so there will be no misunderstanding about the decision a mother needs to make before going ahead with an abortion. Section 6 currently requires a written certification by both the mother and the doctor that the required information was received/provided, but, again the authors of the bill wish to remove proof that any informed consent was provided to the mother. And, many citizens and voters are curious as to why Section 7, (which outlines responsibilities for material production required in the “informed consent”) is also eliminated. Obviously, if the true goal of Bill 162-37 is to actually provide informed consent, then none of these sections should be eliminated. Maybe the authors should suggest even more informational requirements in this bill to conform to their stated intent. But that is clearly not the case.

Speaker Therese M. Terlaje

Page Two of Three

Therefore, I suggest the intention of the bill, on page two, be rewritten as follows:

“It is essential to recognize that women and pregnant women have no right to make informed decisions about their own bodies, including the option to terminate a pregnancy and kill the living child within her.” This would at least be an honest and straightforward statement of the actual intent of the bill and its’ modifications to existing law.

But, unfortunately, the deception does not end here. The second paragraph on page two says the Legislature wants “…to eliminate the risks posed by unsafe, clandestine procedures and provide a regulated environment with qualified medical professionals.” Are they saying that current abortions are basically unsafe? Are they saying more regulation is required, implying that the current regulations are inadequate? Well, I must have an incomplete version of Bill 162-37, because no where in my copy do I see language providing for more regulations to make abortions safer. If unsafe and clandestine abortions are taking place in our Territory (where abortions are still currently legal) why are there no current laws to protect our mothers and children? Perhaps you can ask the authors of this bill to provide a true solution to the unsafe/clandestine procedures they imagine happening.

The next few paragraphs discuss the importance of reproductive healthcare for all, the need for comprehensive sex education and contraceptives, the importance of personal choice, and religious freedoms. That all sounds very nice, but again, there appears to be nothing in the bill to try and achieve these goals. Just deceptive comments to eventually eliminate information crucial for a pregnant mother’s decision to have her baby killed or carried to full term.

If reproductive health care were essential, then why don’t the authors provide mandatory and free pre-natal care so that mother and baby are protected? The authors’ use of reproductive healthcare seems to imply that pregnancy is a disease of some sort, or inherently unhealthy. However, mothers of more than 300 million US citizens might not agree with this implication.

Lastly, as far as personal choice is concerned, the government has restricted a woman’s right to choose in many instances, and those restrictions have been unchallenged. 

1. A woman cannot drink alcohol until she is 21. What happened to her right to choose?
2. A minor woman cannot have bariatric surgery, but a 16 year old woman can have an abortion without her parents’ consent. What happened to the obese minor’s right to choose?
3. A woman cannot drive at 50 miles per hour on Guam. What happened to her right to choose?
4. A woman cannot drive a car at any age without wearing seatbelts. What happened to her right to choose?
5. Smoking in public places is banned, viewing R-rated movies below a certain age is banned, voting rights…and the list of government restrictions goes on and on.

Speaker Therese M. Terlaje

Page Three of Three

So why doesn’t the government also restrict a woman’s right to choose when it comes to abortion? Especially when her decision to have an abortion gives a death sentence to an innocent child. If the “right to choose” is really an essential tenet of governance, then there are many laws and regulations that should be immediately amended or abolished. Is this really the conversation that needs to take place? Or perhaps the “my body/my choice” argument is nothing more than a deceptive lie as well.

As far as Bill 162-37 is concerned, for the many reasons stated within, I urge the Legislature to reject the bill in its entirety.

Sincerely,

/s/

Stephen Wm. Martinez

Mongmong, GU

GUAM'S INFANT MORTALITY RATE: THE REST OF THE STORY

Printed today, 2/15/24, in the Guam Daily Post

Guam's infant mortality rate: The rest of the story

Tim Rohr LINK to Guam Daily Post (The following is copied from the Post with hyperlinks added)

Recent news that Guam’s infant mortality rate (IMR) is twice the national average brought to mind some research I had done on this issue in 2015, and at which time Guam’s IMR had been twice the national average since 2011. So the problem is not new.

My first thought was that Guam’s IMR is high due to our main medical facility (GMH) being a “forever and ever … under-resourced place,” as one doctor put it. In other words, we simply are unable to provide a normal standard of pre and postnatal care for our infants and their mothers. Note: Guam’s maternal mortality rate is also higher than the rest of the nation.

My second thought hearkens back to my 2015 research and a GMH policy titled “Comfort care for non-viable newborns.”

The policy essentially provides a “red line” between palliative care and lifesaving measures for babies born “at the threshold of viability with extremely low birth weight” or with “complex or multiple congenital anomalies incompatible with prolonged life.”

According to the policy, the “red line” is babies born at a gestational age of 25 plus/minus two weeks and weighing less than 500 grams. Meanwhile, in places which are not as “under-resourced” as Guam, an increasing number of children born prematurely are surviving and thriving at ever earlier gestational ages.

Also, the same GMH policy functionally discourages against providing lifesaving measures for babies born up to 27 weeks and weighing up to 750 grams, a gestational age the National Institute of Health states has a 70% chance of survival.

So, at least at first glance, it would seem that Guam’s IMR is another casualty of the politics of our government-run hospital as well as a general lack of service providers, specifically obstetrician-gynecologists, and the resultant lack of pre and postnatal care.

However, there appears to be more to the story.

According to the GMH head of pediatrics, “The percentage of those births that result in a newborn’s death at the hospital was relatively low.” So if these babies are not dying at birth or while still in the hospital, where are they dying?

The caption under a picture in one of the two local articles addressing this issue appears to tell “the rest of the story.”

It reads: “Officers with the Guam Police Department are seen outside a Dededo residence on the evening of Nov. 1, 2023, as they conduct an investigation involving the suspicious death of a 1-year-old child.” In short, the majority of infants who die before the age of 1 year are dying at home.

Meanwhile, a deeper dive into the numbers tells a more concerning story.

According to data published a few weeks ago in this paper, while Guam has a mean infant mortality rate of 10.7 per 1,000, deaths of CHamoru infants is 28.5 per 1,000, which is three times the mean, followed by Chuukese at 16.5, Filipino at 7.5, and whites at 2.25.

Compared to the rest of the world, the CHamoru infant mortality rate of 28.5 per 1,000 ranks CHamoru infant deaths 56th out of 237 countries, and for context, just ahead of countries like Kenya, Rwanda and Guatemala and just behind Uganda, Cambodia and Namibia.

In other words, the number of CHamoru infants dying before their first birthday ranks deep within the Third World.

Meanwhile, this shameful fact does not appear to be of any great concern to our current administration.

Given the tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars our governor has already spent and continues to spend on securing abortionists for Guam, it appears the governor intends to reduce Guam’s infant mortality rate by getting rid of “problem” infants before they’re born.

Tim Rohr has resided in Guam since 1987. He has raised a family of 11 children, owned several businesses and most recently been active in local issues via his blog, JungleWatch.info, letters to local publications and occasional public appearances.

LESSONS FROM A SUPER TYPHOON AND THE INCOMING STORMS THAT SHOULD WAKE US TO THE UGLY REALITIES OF OUR SECULAR GOVERNMENT

 (Posted by Frenchie)

FOREWORD: Last year , following Super Typhoon Mawar, I started writing this essay after I was contacted by several individuals who were testifying about some egregious examples of gross lack of preparedness by our Government's agencies in charge of the protection and the relief of the victims of this catastrophe.

Unfortunately following the collapse of the power and communication grid it became de facto impossible to communicate this column in real time to our readers. While I attempted to send this to our local newspapers, none of them chose to publish it.

As I recently rediscovered it,  and re read it, I thought it was still very pertinent to our situation and decided to share it here, even at this later date.

Following the onslaught of super typhoon Mawar

For the most part, the people of Guam prepared their dwellings and their loved ones for the assault of the incoming fury of God (or as the heathen prefer to call it "Mother Nature"), with a sense of urgency and duty.