Guild of Catholic Doctors

Today I went to the 'Celebrating Life' talk organised by the Guild of Catholic Doctors.
It was a lovely and interesting day, and I also had the great pleasure of meeting the wonderful (& "edifying" !!) Joee Blogs and his friend Andrew (whose photos and antics have featured in a number of Joee's posts!)
It was a blessing to meet them both!


The central theme of the day was the incomparable sanctity & dignity of human life no matter what stage of development it's at.
God created man in his own image and likeness, with a body and soul for the pure and simple reason that He WANTED us to exist and to spend eternity in Heaven with Him!


So that means that every single human life, from embryo, to elderly, no matter what the physical disability, or 'usefulness', productivity, capacity to speak or comprehend, every single human is of infite worth and dignity and is more precious and valuble than every animal or material object in the whole history of creation.


THAT is pretty wow!

and God loves each and every single one of us SO MUCH that He would literally give up everything He has, His very life, for us to be with Him in Heaven!

Ahhh!

Now THAT, my friends, is True Love!


So the talks of the day flowed from that fundamental fact of the intrinsic value and dignity of every human life, and how certain medical procedures, such as abortion, euthanasia, contraception etc, undermine and insult the dignity that every human person possesses.

God doesn't treat us as object, and we shouldn't treat other humans as objects, simply because it's 'convenient'

For example...

- aborting unborn babies (even if they have an illness or if they were created due to a rape. They are innocent and killing them can never be right).

- creating human life in a dish as in IVF

- starving the terminally ill or administering lethal drugs to kill them off

- using the pill (or any form of contraception) which prevents a husband & wife from the total giving of themselves to the other in imitation of Christ giving Himself to the Church.
(the pill, the coil, and injectable contraceptives also kill embryos).

(I also learned the interesting fact that women have a higher mortality in the year following an abortion, than similar woman who have had a normal birth or a miscarriage in stead).

The main speaker (a Dr. Philip Howard) gave an outstanding talk based on Evangelium Vitae, perhaps it will be online, but if not you can always read the encyclical itself online.

[I have decided that one day I am going to make a list of every encyclical and work my way through them all! They are so rich and beautiful! ]

So anyway, I had a lovely day!

It was really strengthening and refreshing to be amongst many other Catholic doctors, medical students and Priests who all love Jesus, and support His Church's teaching on the beauty and dignity of human life, and what that means in terms of morally good medicine.

One doctor said he's been a doctor for 30 years and has never prescribed the pill once! :-)

As Joee said this afternoon when speaking about the importance of having friendships which are life-giving with people who support you in your faith and will help you to grow in holiness (& not drag you into sin):

"Imagine lots of hot hot coals in a fire burning away; if one of the coals is removed from the fire it will continue to glow hot but will eventually cool down. It needs to be put back into the fire with the other coals to remain glowing hot. This is like our friendships - we can be outside the Catholic sphere but eventually we need to go back to our Catholic friends or we'll laps in our Fatih."


Being with good holy people will help you to be good and holy too. If you mix a good apple with a bunch of rotten apples, the rotten apples will soon spread their rottenness to the good apple.

Clearly, I'm not saying to avoid "unholy people", but (even in my own little life-experience), having close friendships with people who help to encourage and nurture your relationship with God, is very helpful if you want to grow closer to Him!
These are life-giving friendships.


Coincidently, this is also what my 'quote of the day' from St. John Bosco is about today:


Fly from bad companions as from the bite of a poisonous snake. If you keep good companions, I can assure you that you will one day rejoice with the blessed in Heaven; whereas if you keep with those who are bad, you will become bad yourself, and you will be in danger of losing your soul.

– St. John Bosco


So anyway! I have strayed from the point! It was a wonderful afternoon and I am very happy to have gone.

~~~~

On an unrelated note....

in my last post I rambled a bit at the end about Chris & the '12 coins' puzzle he was trying to solve (for fun...!)

Well, he managed to solve it in the end!

(I'm not surprised; he's doing a PhD in Physics and so is off-the-chart clever, and he also rows twice a day....meaning he has an increadible amount of will-power and determination!)

(I am slow and give up very easily which is why I didn't even bother attempting to solve it!)

Anyway, my dad (who reads my blog )(....hi daddy!) emailed us some online answers he found for this puzzle so if you wanna read them here they are.

But just for the record, my clever husband solved it by himself!

(what a nerd!)

hehe!