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@spiritualdirections
Actual conversation in the kitchen:
"Do we want to use the regular wok or the fat-bottomed wok?"
Me: "You do know that fat-bottomed woks, they make the wok-ken world go round."
(I got to do my victory dance I do when I win the Dad Joke of the Week award)
Three young women from Holy Name Catholic Church in Denver, Colorado, have answered the call to a cloistered contemplative life as Poor Clar
In the last few months, two of my former students at the Augustine Institute joined the Poor Clares in Roswell, NM. They didn't know it, but there was a third Poor Clare who joined in 2020 who also had attended Holy Name Parish in Denver, whose pastor is my good friend, Fr. Daniel Cardo (pictured in the article on the far side of the what I assume is the cloister's screen).
Sister Antonia of the Holy Wounds of Jesus (middle) is the subject of an article in her diocesan newspaper here: https://www.bridgeportdiocese.org/an-unexpected-path-to-the-contemplative-life/
And I've blogged about Helen (left) before: https://spiritualdirections.tumblr.com/post/762508364463898624/helen-blain-20-to-enter-poor-clare-cloister
The night before college football’s national championship game, several Ohio State players will get together to pray the rosary at the team’
Another article about the work of the OSU Newman Center with the Ohio State football team.
Local chaplain shares unique ties with both teams in national championship | NBC4 WCMH-TV
https://www.nbc4i.com/sports/buckeyes/local-chaplain-shares-unique-ties-to-both-teams-in-national-championship/
I was on TV in Columbus, Ohio today, as the chaplain at Ohio State who graduated from Notre Dame.
NB: We did not stage the scene with the sister and the student randomly tossing a football. That was happening when the news crew came into the Newman Center's lounge.
Rushing into Christmas festivities weeks before the holiday can make us lose sight of this season of preparation.
It’s not first among my pet peeves, but it’s up there: Americans totally ignore the season of Advent. I first really noticed this when I was in Rome in December, and there just wasn’t the same type of shopping spree. The Italians have the custom, common in Catholic countries, of exchanging gifts on the Epiphany, the day that the magi gave gifts to Jesus. Because their shopping deadline was January 6, their Advent just wasn’t as busy, or as materialistic (at least, that’s my theory). For the first time in my life, I was praying more in Advent, and eating a normal amount–and it made Christmas seem much more special.
ADVENT IS NOT THE CHRISTMAS SEASON!!!
Lots of people today refer to the period when Jingle Bells is playing in the CVS as “The Christmas Season” or (more frequently) “The Holiday Season.” It’s the time when we are supposed to be “festive.” There are so many parties and cookies and cakes that the average American adult gains one pound each year during the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas (and keeps it on the next year). It is the time of year when people spend so much money that it’s an essential part of the business model of many retailers.
None of this is thinking the way the Church does. Rather, it serves to undermine the meaning of Christmas.
The season of Advent is a time of preparation; the season of Christmas is the festive time. The season of Christmas begins...on Christmas, not before. There ought to be a marked contrast between the tone of Advent and the tone of Christmas:
The Season of Advent
Time to prepare for the Second Coming
Time of fasting
Liturgical color: violet (like Lent, funerals)
Don’t sing the Gloria at Mass
Time of Penance and Confession
Theme of readings: world is passing away
Time of almsgiving, sacrifice
Time of quiet prayer, meditation
The Season of Christmas
Time to celebrate the Birth of Jesus
Time of feasting
Liturgical color: white (like Easter)
Angels sang the first Gloria to the shepherds
Time to celebrate birth of our Savior
Theme of readings: Peace on earth
Time of family, good cheer
Time of louder prayer, singing
Keep in mind that the preparation for Christmas is really limited to the novena before Christmas, starting on Dec. 17. The majority of Advent involves praying for Christ’s second coming, rather than remembering his first coming.
Some practical ways to celebrate Advent:
Call it Advent. That’s the proper name for the liturgical season, so actually use it.
Choose a mortification for the season, a lesser version of what you choose during Lent. This coincides with the nickname of Advent--the “little Lent.” Perhaps you could give up alcohol or cookies or other sweets, so that when you go to “Christmas” parties, you maintain an appropriate mentality.
Do something special on Sundays. Light Advent candles, for example, or do something analogous that marks the progress of the season with your friends.
Spend some extra time in prayer. Perhaps make the effort to go to daily Mass, and say the rosary.
Make a special effort to perform works of mercy, which in certain contexts might simply mean smiling more and sharing your Christian joy with those who are stressed.
And then, when Christmas comes around--really cut loose! The Octave of Christmas is 8 days of celebrating the great mystery of Jesus’ Incarnation, so celebrate it accordingly. The contrast between Advent and Christmas should help to make the Christmas season not just a continuation of a month of getting fatter, but a special season focusing on the fact that God became Man in order to save us from our sins. Rather than being exhausted because of weeks of excess, we are prepared to welcome the King of Kings with excitement.
“Our Guardian Angel keeps us in constant touch with heaven”
Some classic theology about the guardian angels, from Adolphe Tanquerey’s The Spiritual Life:
186. The Guardian Angels. Some among the Angels are commissioned with the care of individual souls: these are the Guardian Angels. This is the traditional doctrine of the Fathers, based upon scriptural texts and supported by solid reasons. It has been confirmed by the Church in the institution of a feast in honor of the Guardian Angels.
The reasons that support this doctrine flow from our relationship to God, for we are His children, members of Jesus Christ and temples of the Holy Ghost.
“Because we are His children,” says Father [Jean-Jacques] Olier, ”He appoints to us as tutors the princes of His realm, who hold it an honor to have us in their charge. Because we are His members, He wills that those very spirits that minister unto Him be also at our side to render us their services. Because we are His temples in which He Himself dwells, He wills that Angels hover about us as they do about our churches, so that bowed down in worship before Him they may offer a perpetual homage to His glory, supplying for our neglect and making reparation for our irreverence.”
Father Olier goes on to say that God wishes through the agency of His Angels to unite intimately the Church Triumphant and the Church Militant: “He sends this mysterious host of Angels in order that they may, by uniting themselves to us and binding us to themselves, form one body of the Church of heaven, and the Church of earth.”
187. Our Guardian Angel keeps us in constant touch with heaven. To derive full profit from his guardianship we can do no better than direct our thoughts frequently to our Guardian Angel, making him the object of our veneration, our confidence and our love.
a) We venerate him by hailing him as one of those privileged beings who ever see the face of God and who are to us the representatives of our Heavenly Father. Therefore, we should do nothing that could displease or sadden our Angel; on the contrary, we must strive to give him proof of our respect by emulating his fidelity and loyalty in God’s service. This is, indeed, the most touching way in which can attest our esteem for him.
b) We show him our confidence, by bearing in mind the mighty protection he furnishes us and his unfailing goodness towards us, his God-given charges. Since he is a master in foiling the wiles of the devil, we should invoke him especially when we are assailed by this treacherous foe and in all dangerous occasions in which his foresight and his adroitness will be of great help. We should likewise call for his assistance when determining our vocation, for he better than any other will know the providential designs of God in our regard. Finally, in all important affairs with others it is well to address ourselves to their Guardian Angels that these persons may be well-disposed towards the mission we are about to discharge in their behalf.
c) We manifest to our Guardian Angel our love by reflecting that he has ever been and is still our devoted friend, ever ready to render us services the extent and import of which we shall realize only in heaven. By faith, however, we can even now understand, though only imperfectly, something of his good offices toward us, and this suffices to call forth our gratitude and our love. When loneliness weighs heavily upon us, let us remember that we are not alone, that near us hovers a friend, devoted and generous, upon whom we can lean and with whom we can hold familiar converse.
Let us bear in mind that in honoring our Guardian Angel we honor God Himself whom our Angel represents here below, and let us often unite ourselves to him in order to give greater glory to God.
Reblogging for the Feast.
Helen Blain (’20) to Enter Poor Clare Cloister | Thomas Aquinas College
“The Lord has given me so much grace,” says Helen Blain (’20), as she prepares to enter the Poor Clare Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe
Last week, one of my former students at the Augustine Institute entered a contemplative order, the Poor Clares in Roswell, NM. I found this article about her on the website of Thomas Aquinas College, her alma mater. Interestingly, she mentions my class!
After a successful four years at the College, Miss Blain graduated in 2020 and undertook graduate studies at the Augustine Institute immediately after. She took a class on the spiritual life and found her prayer life completely rejuvenated. “That class set me on fire in a new way, and I really started to live many of the things I learned,” she says. “I began to give myself over to mental prayer and mortification in a serious way and began to experience the presence of God in a powerful way.”
The Patron Saint of Helicopter Moms
“It cannot be that the son of these tears should perish,”– a beleaguered bishop’s response to St. Monica, who had been pestering him to talk to her college-age son about his spiritual life.
Today is the feast day of St. Monica, which comes the day before the feast day of her son, St. Augustine. Here is an excerpt from Book 3 of his Confessions on how Augustine’s ‘college years’ led him away from a virtuous life, and how his mother’s prayers, rather than her attempts at more direct intervention, helped win him back.
1. I came to Carthage, where a caldron of unholy loves was seething and bubbling all around me. I was not in love as yet, but I was in love with love..I was looking for something to love, for I was in love with loving, and I hated security and a smooth way, free from snares. Within me I had a dearth of that inner food which is thyself, my God–although that dearth caused me no hunger. To love and to be loved was sweet to me, and all the more when I gained the enjoyment of the body of the person I loved. Thus I polluted the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence and I dimmed its luster with the slime of lust. Yet, foul and unclean as I was, I still craved, in excessive vanity, to be thought elegant and urbane…6. Those studies I was then pursuing, generally accounted as respectable, were aimed at distinction in the courts of law–to excel in which, the more crafty I was, the more I should be praised. Such is the blindness of men that they even glory in their blindness. And by this time I had become a master in the School of Rhetoric, and I rejoiced proudly in this honor and became inflated with arrogance.
…19. And now thou didst “stretch forth thy hand from above” (Ps. 143:7) and didst draw up my soul out of that profound darkness [of Manicheism] because my mother, thy faithful one, wept to thee on my behalf more than mothers are accustomed to weep for the bodily deaths of their children. For by the light of the faith and spirit which she received from thee, she saw that I was dead. And thou didst hear her, O Lord, thou didst hear her and despised not her tears when, pouring down, they watered the earth under her eyes in every place where she prayed. Thou didst truly hear her. Nearly nine years passed in which I wallowed in the mud of that deep pit and in the darkness of falsehood, striving often to rise, but being all the more heavily dashed down. But all that time this chaste, pious, and sober widow–such as thou dost love–was now more buoyed up with hope, though no less zealous in her weeping and mourning; and she did not cease to bewail my case before thee, in all the hours of her supplication. Her prayers entered thy presence, and yet thou didst allow me still to tumble and toss around in that darkness.
21. Meanwhile, thou gavest her yet another answer, … by a priest of thine, a certain bishop reared in thy Church and well versed in thy books. When that woman had begged him to agree to have some discussion with me, to refute my errors, to help me to unlearn evil and to learn the good‑‑ for it was his habit to do this when he found people ready to receive it–he refused, very prudently, as I afterward realized. For he answered that I was still unteachable, being inflated with the novelty of that heresy, and that I had already perplexed diverse inexperienced persons with vexatious questions, as she herself had told him. “But let him alone for a time,” he said, “only pray God for him. He will of his own accord, by reading, come to discover what an error it is and how great its impiety is.”… When he had said this she was not satisfied, but repeated more earnestly her entreaties, and shed copious tears, still beseeching him to see and talk with me. Finally the bishop, a little vexed at her importunity, exclaimed, “Go your way; as you live, it cannot be that the son of these tears should perish.” As she often told me afterward, she accepted this answer as though it were a voice from heaven.
Reblogging for the feast
Saints have the uncanny ability to startle us with their insights into the basic truths of our faith. Until a holy person comes along and em
In today's Gospel, Jesus says the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are like children. He doesn't mean that it belongs to the childish, or to those who have to be told not to put dirt up their noses, or to those who lack potty training. What he does mean is to be humble, as Fr. Hanson argues:
St Therese reintroduced modern people to what it means to be a child of God more than in name only. Her teaching may not come across in the sweeping, apocalyptic tenor of a prophet, nor with the urgency of a private revelation. Yet for those with ears to hear, the muted tones of her “little way” of spiritual childhood resonate with the equally subdued character of daily life. Woven of aspirations, trials, successes and setbacks, our daily experiences spontaneously converge in a cry for God’s help. How often do we find ourselves needing and asking for strength—even courage—to make it through the ordinary duties and pressures of life? St Therese’s little way defuses the distress that our weaknesses might cause by encouraging an open avowal of one’s limitations. She declares: “It is so good to feel that one is weak and little!” This is because Jesus reserves His saving mission for the lost, the sick, and the forsaken. When we recognize our place in one or more of those categories, then we reach the same conclusion as St Paul who not only refused to conceal but preferred to boast of his weaknesses (cf. 2 Cor 11:30; 12:9-10). Therese explains her little way: “It is to recognize our nothingness, to expect everything from God as a little child expects everything from its father … to be disquieted about nothing, and not to be set on gaining our living,” that is, “the eternal life of heaven.” Therefore she resolves: “I never wanted to grow up,” in spirit, so as to avoid taking credit for whatever good she might do. Rather, to remain little means “believing oneself capable of anything,” while never becoming discouraged over failures, “for children fall often, but they are too little to hurt themselves very much.” For those who seek signs and wonders this is not the way. But for all who seek to know “the only true God and Jesus Christ” (cf. Jn 17:3), it is all one needs to know.
Will Heller, a 21-year-old from Toledo, Ohio, is a two-time Junior National Medalist and All American and a state record holder in weightlif
"If you don't know what to do, do it like a human being."
If a person is in constant prayer and in deeds pleasing to God, can demonic forces overcome him so that he strays from the true path and quarrels with his loved ones?
Thank you, father
Demons are easily conquered by Jesus, we see repeatedly in the Gospel. That's because demons are fallen angels, and angels are creatures, and God is the Creator of all creatures. The demons would not exist were it not for God's sustaining will.
Everyone who is united to Jesus through baptism and who remains in a state of grace is free from demonic forces. Such a person can never be possessed. The devil can give you a hard time on the outside, but cannot influence your soul.
So if you "quarrel with your loved ones," that's not a result of demonic forces, but something more natural in its origin. A bad mood, or an attachment to something that you love more than your "loved ones." And so the response should be more natural: not being guided by your moods, mortifying your attachment to the thing you love more than your loved ones, being intentional about being patient and listening.
Demons are only a threat to those Christians who separate themselves from Christ deliberately, who commit mortal sins and invite them in. So "demonic forces" are not the explanation for our ordinary spiritual difficulties. Almost always, we are.
The U.S. bishops' conference will vote in June on a 'pastoral framework' for ministry
The USCCB is working on a document about youth and young adult ministry. The Pillar interviewed one of the committee staff members who was involved in drafting this "pastoral framework", which will be voted on by the Bishops' Conference next month. I have been working in young adult ministry for most of my priesthood, and even before that. I've been a college chaplain and a college professor. I was recognized by my diocese for my work with young adults. And yet, I'd never heard of anything from the USCCB on this topic. So I was interested to read about this document.
The theme of the document will be "listen, teach, send". The reporter notes that this sounds very much like the FOCUS model of "win, build, send". Well, sniffs the staff member, "the threefold FOCUS perspective did come up, but that did not inspire [the document's] paradigm."
I have worked closely with FOCUS (the Felllowship of Catholic University Students) for years. It is one of the largest Catholic apostolates in the country, and it specializes in young people--people coming into colleges, people in college, people recently out of college. They have been thinking about and studying this demographic for years. They try lots of things, they learn what works, and they change what doesn't. They have 25 years of practical experience in working with young people, and they are very effective.
And so I ask, Why wouldn't the bishops conference want to start from what FOCUS has learned? Why would anyone think that the committee staff members have a better idea of how to do youth ministry than this gigantic and effective youth ministry organization?
[There's actually an answer to this question! The committee members can be found here: https://www.usccb.org/topics/youth-and-young-adult-ministries/bishops-working-group-youth-and-young-adults. Scrolling to the bottom, one finds a list of the consultants and staff members. The staff member who is in charge of Youth and Young Adult Ministries last worked directly with young adults in 2006, before the first smartphone. (Things have changed with America's youth since then!) The consultants include two people who work for the National Institute on Ministry with Young Adults and the USCCB National Advisory Team on Young Adult Ministry. These seem to be the same thing. The second organization does not have a functioning website, but simply redirects to the first organization's website, which seems barely to have been updated since 2021. (Young people use the web!) The other consultants seem to be specialists in outreach to minority communities. Objective conclusion: Nobody on the team has anything like the practical experience with young adults that FOCUS has.]
But that sort of argument is ad hominem--it might not matter who a person is if his ideas are great. My goal is not to disparage administrators and bureaucrats--Administration is one of the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit! Everyone's life is better when the bureaucrats are good at their job! But when we turn to the ideas... they do not seem so great.
The USCCB Committee seems commited to the idea of "accompanying the youth,"--one of its consultants wrote an article on "accompaniment" for Accompany Magazine-- which I think helps explain why they thought that the first step in dealing with young adults is to "listen" to them. I'm not opposed to listening to young people, but I prefer FOCUS' idea that the first step is to win them. If I ask an indifferent and poorly formed freshman in college what he wants out of the Church, I'm not sure he'll tell me anything worthwhile. That's because he hasn't thought about the Church. He's never wondered, "What is it about the Church that is keeping me from being a holy person with a deep interior life?" So, listening to him will not help me figure out that answer. The difference between "listening" and "winning" is that you can only listen to someone's needs if he or she can articulate them. Many young people don't know what they want from the Church. They need to be shown the Church in all its richness, so that they can respond to it. That's what FOCUS' idea of winning does.
The USCCB draft document proposes that the Church meet the young people "where they're at". The problem with this is that the Church is bigger than young people understand; basing our apostolic approach upon what they understand about the Church is to falsify the Church. The better move is not to shrink the Church to fit in the confines of a teenage intellect, but to make the teenager want to learn more about this cool and ancient Church. Impress them, don't coddle them.
Another difference between the "listen, teach, send" model and the "win, build, send" model of FOCUS: Listening and teaching are at the level of the intellect. But for many young adults, it's their wills that need to change before they are open to learning. I'm a professor, and I'm a big believer in teaching. But it's basically pointless to try to engage an unwilling student. FOCUS trains their missionaries in how to win young people over in a variety of ways, and they apply their intelligence to find new ways to reach the each generation of students. Once they've become engaged, that's when they start to thirst for the kind of teaching I'm more than happy to give.
Finally, it looks like the USCCB document will be focused on parishes as the locus of youth and young adult ministry.* FOCUS makes the small group the place where young people are principally formed. That is clearly the superior model, both for winning people and for building them up intellectually and humanly to be able to go out and spread the Gospel themselves. Sunday Mass is essential to the spiritual life, but it is not optimized for formation.
If the USCCB wants to listen to young people, I'd recommend that it listen to the young people in FOCUS. And in St. Paul's Outreach, in the World Youth Alliance, NET ministries, and other extremely effective apostolates working with young adults.
* The USCCB committee has as a major initiative to get young people to "actively participate" in the Mass on the Feast of Christ the King each year--see the 13:30 mark of this video. This is a meh idea, one that starts with a theological mistake: Active participation in the liturgy is a term used by Sacrosanctum Concilium #14, which means to be spiritually active--to pay attention at Mass and to pray along with the liturgy, rather than zoning out or praying the rosary while the priest prays the Mass. Active participation does not mean to participate as an usher or a lector or a greeter or some other physically active role. Obviously, youth and young adults are not engaged in the Mass unless they are spiritually engaged. Sometimes, those who are spiritually engaged also volunteer to be lectors. The Committee puts the cart before the horse.
I was reading Screwtape Proposes a Toast and in it Screwtape is complaining to his fellow demons about the weak souls on whose anguish they are subsisting. He essentially complains that the petty sins of these souls are nothing to feast on compared to the great sins of genocidal tyrants.
He compares the anguish of these souls to different foods. The rage, egotism, and cruelty of especially heinous sinners are described as something to crunch, something delicious, something that warms them to their innards.
Screwtape describes the anguish of a corrupt municipal authority as lacking flavor.
And then he says this: "Then there was the lukewarm casserole of adulterers." Mind you he says this specifically about adulterers who "blundered" into the wrong bed for weak reasons such as wanting to prove to themselves that they were "virile" or "normal" or because they had nothing else to do.
But I will never forget the lukewarm casserole of adulterers.
"Screwtape Proposes a Toast" is one of the great meditations on 1 Peter 5:8, "Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for [someone] to devour." If the devils will devour people, mightn't they be interested in what they taste like?
Wisdom of St. Padre Pio
ADVICE ON GUARDIAN ANGELS & PRAYER
(In a letter he wrote on July 15, 1913, to Anita, one of his spiritual daughters, he gives her valuable advice regarding how to act in relation to her guardian angel, and prayer. it would do us well to also take Padre Pio’s advice to heart. Two minutes to read.)
Dear Daughter of Jesus, May your heart always be a temple of the Holy Spirit. May Jesus increase the fire of his love in your soul and may he always smile upon you, as he does on all the souls that he loves. May Mary Most Holy smile upon you during all the events of your life, and abundantly make up for the absence of your earthly mother. May your good guardian angel always watch over you, and be your guide on the rough path of life. May he always keep you in the grace of Jesus and hold you up with his hands so that you may not hurt your foot on a stone. May he protect you under his wings from all the deceits of the world, the devil and the flesh. Have great devotion, Anita, to this beneficent angel. How consoling it is to know that we have a spirit who, from the womb to the tomb, never leaves us even for an instant, not even when we dare to sin. And this heavenly spirit guides and protects us like a friend, a brother. But it is very consoling to know that this angel prays unceasingly for us, and offers God all of our good actions, our thoughts, and our desires, if they are pure. Oh! For goodness’ sake, don’t forget this invisible companion, ever present, ever disposed to listen to us and even more ready to console us. Oh, wonderful intimacy! Oh, blessed companionship! If only we could understand it! Keep him always before your mind’s eye. Remember this angel’s presence often, thank him, pray to him, always keep up a good relationship. Open yourself up to him and confide your suffering to him. Be always afraid of offending the purity of his gaze. Know this, and keep it well present in your mind. He is easily offended, very sensitive. Turn to him in moments of supreme anguish and you will experience his beneficent help. Never say that you are alone in the battle against your enemies; never say that you have no one to whom you can open your heart and confide. It would be a grave injustice to this heavenly messenger. Humble yourself before the Lord and trust in him; spend your energy, with the help of divine grace, in the practice of the virtues, and then let grace work in you as God desires. The virtues are what sanctify the soul and not supernatural phenomena. Pray out loud as well; the time has not yet come to abandon these prayers. Support the difficulties you experience when doing this with patience and humility. Also be ready to suffer distractions and dryness, and you must not, under any circumstances, abandon prayer and meditation. It is the Lord who wants to treat you this way for your spiritual advantage…. P. Pio
I often preach on St. Padre Pio on October 2nd, the Feast of the Guardian Angels.
England's National Health Service to stop offering gender transitions to adolescents
Britain's NHS has accepted the recommendations by Dr. Hilary Cass and her team of researchers, after a four-year study, which showed that the "gender affirming care" for adolescents with gender dysphoria was not working and should be replaced by normal psychological therapies.
Here's a summary:
"The concept of 'gender-affirming care' – the notion that the doctors must accept children’s declarations of identity at face value and must assist them in gender change as early as possible– actually originated in the United States, and only then spread internationally.
"The Cass Report provides a scathing assessment of the gender-affirming approach in general, and the gender-clinic model of care, which operationalized this approach of on-demand provision of gender-reassignment interventions, in particular. Going forward, England will treat gender dysphoric youth <18 using standard psychological and psychotherapeutic approaches, with very few young people receiving endocrine gender reassignment interventions (gender-transition surgeries for <18s have never been allowed in England). Further, the review noted that the group of young adults 18-25 is subject to many of the same concerns as the <18s, and recommended that the new regional “hubs” being set up to help gender dysphoric youth be expanded to include patients up to 25 years old.
"NHS England (NHSE) welcomed the Cass Report's recommendations and expressed a firm commitment to implement the recommended changes. However, NHSE went one major step further, announcing that they will be initiating a Cass-style review into the adult gender dysphoria clinics (GDCs) in England. NHSE had already decided to bring forward to 2024 its periodic review of the adult 'service specifications,' which set out what clinical services adult clinics provide; as a consequence of Cass’ recommendations, they are additionally launching a much broader review of the entire adult gender clinic system. This was in part due to the concerns raised by the Cass review that a vulnerable group of 17-25-year-olds (who can access adult GDCs) represents fundamentally the same group of youth as the <18s, and needs similar protections from non-evidence-based practices. Further, whistleblower complaints from adult clinics corroborated concerns that vulnerable adults were not receiving proper evidence-based care. The refusal by all but one adult gender clinic to cooperate in the outcome analysis for the 9,000 patients as part of the Cass review likely contributed to NHSE’s determination to investigate the adult service. Adult gender dysphoria clinics see patients aged 17 and upwards, and NHSE has written to require them to halt appointments with 17-year-olds.
"In summary, the care for <18s in England will no longer be based on the 'gender-affirming' model of care but instead will treat youth with gender distress similarly to how it treats youth with other developmental struggles. Further, with the announcement of the adult gender clinic review, England starts a new chapter in the history of gender medicine, with a new focus on vulnerable gender-dysphoric young adults.
"Many more developments are expected from England in the coming months. To what extent the UK changes will impact the West’s approach to helping young gender-dysphoric individuals remains to be seen. In SEGM’s view, the impact will likely be significant, even if delayed, as other countries contend with England’s findings and their implications for evidence-based clinical practice."
Read the original report here: https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/CassReview_Final.pdf
Read the National Health Service's response here: https://www.england.nhs.uk/2024/04/nhs-england-responds-to-the-publication-of-the-independent-review-of-gender-identity-services-for-children-and-young-people/
Source:
https://segm.org/Final-Cass-Report-2024-NHS-Response-Summary
Why we should go to Mass on Sundays:
"On the evening of that first day of the week [i.e., Easter Sunday]...Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you." Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came."
St. Thomas was the only apostle not to spend the Sunday of the Resurrection with Jesus, and the only one not to believe in the Resurrection.
And the one Jesus rebukes for his lack of faith.
If we miss Mass on Sunday, the day we celebrate the Resurrection, we manifest a lack of belief in the Resurrection. We might protest that we do believe; but it turns out that belief is not actionable for us. Jesus is risen and we don't care. Other things are more important.
Don't doubt that Jesus will rebuke us also.
