Leave the Lights On

National Cat Day

2009-10-29T12:56:39+00:00

I have a lot of flaws. But among my virtues, I am a cat lover. So I would like to bring to your attention the fact that today is National Cat Day in the U.S., with the goal of 10,000 cat adoptions nationwide. St. Gertrude, patron saint of cats, and St. Francis, patron saint of all animals, please ask God's blessing for cats needing homes and for the people who care for them. Amen.

Gardasil Pros and Cons: Is Gardasil Safe?

2009-10-21T18:10:46+00:00

Find out the truth about the Gardasil human papillomavirus vaccine. This article is free from influence from drug marketers or anti-vaccine activists, and is based on the most recent information published in medical journals. (See the references section.)

About HPV Vaccines

HPV actually refers to a family of about 130 viruses, only some of which are sexually transmitted, and some of which are harmless. Gardasil is the best-known HPV vaccine in the United States. It is manufactured by Merck & Co. and is quadrivalent; that is, it protects against four of the dozen or so HPV types that are associated with cervical and other cancers. Cervarix, a bivalent vaccine (protecting against two HPV types) from GlaxoSmithKline, is available overseas.

A safe and effective HPV vaccine would be an important means of preventing cervical cancer. According to current medical knowledge, all cases of cervical cancer are caused by HPV (though only a few types are implicated); therefore, it is logical to conclude that preventing HPV will prevent cervical cancer. Girls and women may be exposed to the potentially cancer-causing types of HPV through promiscuity, one-time "mistakes," previous sexual contact or infidelity in a monogamous male partner, or sexual assault.

HPV vaccines are controversial, and one reason is that it removes one of the many possible negative consequences of premarital and extramarital sex. This objection primarily comes from parents who fear that their daughters would see an HPV vaccine as a "license" for teen sex. My personal opinion of this stance is that it loses its power if the girls in question are educated about the other risks of sexual behavior (physical, emotional, and spiritual) outside the Christian moral model, and it fails to take into account the possibility of a woman being infected through rape or through the indiscretion of an unfaithful husband.

Another source of HPV controversy regards its safety and efficacy. Many anecdotal reports, stemming largely from the unscientific anti-vaccine crowd, circulate the Internet about severe reactions causing long-term health problems or death. On the other hand, the Merck marketing machine has convinced many health authorities to uncritically advocate the vaccine. The most infamous such incident happened in Texas in 2007, when Republican governor Rick Perry unilaterally issued an executive order requiring the Gardasil vaccine for girls enrolled in Texas public schools. The most charitable thing I can say about this order is that it was very premature, and there was widespread speculation that Perry was influenced by donations or promises from Merck.

With all this hysterical noise about HPV vaccines, real information can be hard to find. Is Gardasil safe and effective? Is there a marketing cover-up of scientific accounts of problems with the vaccine? What is the truth about Gardasil pros and cons?

Gardasil Pros and Cons: Safety and Effectiveness

Numerous studies have concluded that Gardasil is a safe vaccine (Lepique et al. 2009; Medeiros et al. 2009; Einstein et al. 2009; Prescrire Intl 2009; Printz 2009). While it is true that tens of thousands of adverse events following Gardasil vaccination have been reported to the FDA, it is important to realize that adverse event reports do not show a cause and effect relationship (they can also be coincidences) and are difficult to analyze statistically. Nevertheless, the rate of serious adverse events (such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, a potentially life-threatening paralysis) is about the same as in the general population, which does not support the hypothesis that Gardasil causes serious adverse effects, even rarely.

A review of six studies of a total of almost 50,000 women found that Gardasil prevented human papillomavirus lesions in only 62% of women compared to the control group. Cervarix protected against legions in 93%, despite being effective against fewer types of HPV (Medeiros et al.). Other studies have produced results consistent with this finding; for example, in a blind study by Einstein et al., Cervarix resulted in more antibodies to HPV than Gardasil.

Still, while these data do indicate that Gardasil is not very effective at preventing HPV lesions, it is still significantly more effective than no vaccination or placebo. But what about cervical cancer? Medeiros et al. note that ">a longer follow-up is necessary" to determine whether Gardasil will have any impact on cervical cancer morbidity and mortality (rates of illness and death).

According to her colleague Steve Mosher, Joan Robinson of the Population Research Institute says she attended a seminar by Dr. Diane Harper, a lead developer of Gardasil, at which Dr. Harper stated, "if we get the vaccine and continue PAP screening, we will not lower the rate of cervical cancer in the U.S." (Mosher 2009). Unfortunately, Dr. Harper's remarks are unpublished and cannot be verified, but if true, it is a grave indictment of Gardasil's ability to prevent cervical cancer. What is definitely true is that routine Pap smears are effective against cervical cancer, raising questions about the necessity of an HPV vaccine.

Gardasil protects (but not with 100% efficacy) against HPV types that together cause about 70% of cervical cancer cases in the U.S. (Medeiros et al.) That means that it is completely ineffective at preventing 30% of cervical cancers, and that Pap smears (a very highly effective protection against cervical cancer) will still be necessary for vaccinated women. Pap smears are routine tests that are widely covered by insurance, while Gardasil is not covered by many insurance plans, and a full course can cost up to $1000, including doctors' fees (Printz).

Should You Get Vaccinated?

Considering all the information available at this time about Gardasil pros and cons, my opinion is this: I believe Gardasil is safe; however, I also believe it is unnecessary. Regular Pap smears are an effective means of identifying women at risk of cervical cancer, allowing these women to be treated before cancer develops. And Pap smears are necessary to prevent cancer even with Gardasil vaccination (Lepique et al.) No long-term studies are available to show whether Gardasil provides any protection against cervical cancer death. Therefore, there is no reason to receive the Gardasil vaccine at this time, as long as regular Pap smears are used instead.

Note

I did not consider one article my search turned up, Satyaprakash et al. (2009). Its abstract mentions cervical cancer and HPV, then states that "[t]wo current prophylactic vaccines have proved highly effective in preventing disease." Because the abstract did not specify which disease was prevented (cervical cancer or HPV), and because I do not have access to the article's full text, I am not considering this claim to be significant. The other research presented here indicates that HPV vaccines are effective against HPV but do not indicate whether they are effective against cervical cancer.

References

No author listed. "Adverse effects of papillomavirus vaccines: pharmacovigilance data in 2008." Prescrire International 2009 Aug;18(102):163 (short communication).

Einstein, Mark H., et al. "Comparison of the immunogenicity and safety of Cervarix() and Gardasil((R)) human papillomavirus (HPV) cervical cancer vaccines in healthy women aged 18-45 years." Human Vaccines October 14, 2009; 5(10):705-719.

Lepique, Ana Paula; Tatiana Rabachini; and Luisa Lina Villa. "HPV vaccination: the beginning of the end of cervical cancer? - A Review." Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz February 2009; 104(1). doi: 10.1590/S0074-02762009000100001

Medeiros, Lidia Rosi, et al. "Efficacy of Human Papillomavirus Vaccines: A Systematic Quantitative Review." International Journal of Gynecological Cancer October 2009; 19(7):1166-1176. doi: 10.1111/IGC.0b013e3181a3d100

Mosher, Steve. "Merck Researcher Admits: Gardasil Guards Against Almost Nothing." Published on Catholic Exchange website, October 21, 2009.

Printz, Carrie. "Questions Remain About the Human Papillomavirus Vaccine." Cancer February 2009; 115(4):699-701. doi: 10.1002/cncr.24080

Satyaprakash, A., et al. "Human papillomavirus vaccines." Dermatologic Therapy 2009 Mar-Apr;22(2):150-7.

The Role of Saints in the Church

2009-10-18T07:00:32+00:00

A common misconception among non-Catholics of many stripes is that Catholics worship saints. This is incorrect; Catholics merely offer veneration to saints, in the same sense that any person might venerate, for instance, an ancestor who was a combat veteran, or a figure who played a prominent role in history. Americans venerate George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Junior by making their birthdays into national holidays. We do not worship these people, but rather honor them because of the ideals they represent.

Saints as Role Models

Saints have a couple roles in Catholic spirituality. First, they are role models, which is why they are honored (but not worshiped, as they are only humans just like us). For example, a parish named after (for example) St. Maximilian Kolbe, through its name, calls attention to the life of St. Maximilian, who lived and died for God.

The Communion of Saints

Second, Catholics believe that all the dead who are in heaven are aware and active beings, and great friends of God. We have a concept called the Communion of Saints, which is the group of all baptized Christians who have ever lived (dead and alive) with the exception of those in Hell. Just as I have "communion" or friendship with, say, a fellow Christian, I also have friendship with Christ's friends in heave, the saints. "Praying" to saints is really just talking to them, as I might talk to a person on earth. We believe that in a sense God "relays" these conversations to the saints we are addressing, as saints themselves have no such powers, being humans. When we ask favors of saints, we are asking for their intercession. In other words, we are asking them to pray for us, just as we might ask other Christians on Earth to pray for us. If I have a special intention, I pray directly to God, and I ask other Christians (friends on earth and saints both) to pray for it, as well. That's it. That's all it is, even with the Virgin Mary: we ask her to pray for us. Our main prayer to her, the Hail Mary, asks, "Holy Mary ... pray for us sinners..."

Latria, Dulia, and Hyperdulia

The Latin terms latria, dulia, and hyperdulia were defined at least as far back as the 8th century. Latria means worship or adoration, and it is reserved for God alone. Dulia is veneration or honor, and it is afforded to the saints. They never receive latria. The Virgin Mary is our greatest saint because she was given special privileges by God. She receives the highest degree of veneration, hyperdulia, but still never latria.

Do you have any questions about the saints in Catholic life or belief?

New column: Ordered to Teach

2009-10-17T16:58:51+00:00

Among my various hats is that of lay catechist. I am one of several who teach the 11th-grade Confirmation candidates in my parish. I feel called to the ministry of teaching about the faith so strongly that I have considered starting a separate blog called "Ordered to Teach." I think that instead, it would make an excellent column here at Leave the Lights On.

There are two meanings to the title of this column. In the first place, it reflects God's command to me that I teach about him. In the second place, it reflects the fact that God has put this drive and ability into my nature; that is, my purpose is ordered toward teaching.

I have little formal catechetical training. I am not immune to error in any way. In what I present here, as in everything I write about faith, I strive to be true to the orthodox Catholic faith. Any error is inadvertent and is purely my own.

Would you like to write a column on this site? Contact the site administrator using the link below. Columns about science, Catholicism, Catholic culture, media commentary, and reviews are a few examples of available topics. Articles can be occasional, monthly, weekly, or more frequent.

Leaving Baby Jayden to Die Was Wrong, But Not Rationed Care

2009-10-05T08:15:02+00:00

Sarah Capewell of the United Kingdom went into labor when she was 21 weeks and 5 days pregnant. Unfortunately for her and her son, in the U.K., the National Health Service (NHS) has declared that any baby under 23 weeks gestation is non-viable. This rule applies to all babies, including those who, like baby Jayden, have not read the guidelines and have the temerity to be born alive.

Sarah was 2 days shy of the 22-week cutoff for doctors to administer medication to try to stop her early labor. (The reason for the 22-week rule may be because labor, once started, can rarely be delayed for over a week.) Nor would they administer the emergency medication that could have helped Jayden's tiny lungs mature faster.

Nevertheless, Jayden was born alive. And no doctor would lift a finger to help him.

In the United States, thanks to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, babies of any gestational age who are born alive—even if in the process of an abortion—must be given care. Not so in the U.K.

In Florida, Amillia Sonja Taylor was born in October 2006 just one gestational day older than Jayden. She weighed 26 pounds and was "developmentally progressing very well," according to her mother, reported a Florida news channel on Amillia Taylor's second birthday in 2008. (That's the most recent article I could dig up.) She is recognized as the most premature surviving baby in the world. Perhaps Jayden could have beat her by a day, had NHS doctors given him the chance.

There is no reason to believe, however, that Jayden's shameful neglect resulted from rationed care. The timing of the story, as the U.S. is embroiled in a debate over health care reforms, could not have been worse for the government-run health care cause. Commentator Mark Rienzi, for example, made a tenuous association between Jayden's death under the NHS and the fate of future American preemies under President Obama's health care proposals, administrated by "cost-conscious government bureaucrats." Rienzi presents Jayden's case as the result of "rationed care at the beginning of life." It was not. It was simply bad medicine.

From all accounts, Jayden was not denied treatment because his poor prognosis failed some cost-benefit analysis. It was because the doctors could not see past their insular view that life begins at 23 weeks gestation, darn it, even if empirical evidence in the form of a living infant contradicts that view. Said a hospital spokesman, "Like other acute hospitals, we follow national guidance from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine regarding premature births."

It is an abhorrent case of circular reasoning: Babies born under 23 weeks in the U.K. can't survive, because they are not given care. Therefore, the NHS reasons, babies born under 23 weeks should not be given care because they can't survive.

Rationed care didn't kill baby Jayden, but he was the victim of politics nevertheless. The U.K.'s guidelines on preemie treatment are tied to the nation's abortion debate. According to parenting blogger Rachel Campos-Duffy, "there is genuine concern [in the U.K.] that lowering the viability age of a fetus would trigger another national debate over abortion limits." The maximum gestational age for abortions in the U.K. was changed from 28 weeks to 24 weeks in 1990 in the face of increasing scientific evidence that 24-week fetuses are viable outside the womb.

The 20 Weeks Campaign, a movement to lower Britain's elective abortion limit to babies 20 weeks and younger, says the U.K. has the most liberal abortion laws in Europe, citing an article in the Daily Mail. While the statement is exaggerated (Belgium, for example, does not restrict abortion at any age), it does carry some truth: Germany and Italy restrict abortion-on-demand to the first trimester (about 13 weeks), while Spain and Poland do not allow it at all.

Abortion is always a tragedy, victimizing both an innocent baby and his or her mother. It's doubly tragic that Sarah and Jayden Capewell were abortion victims, too, because Sarah did not seek any kind of abortion at all.

Health Care Reform

2009-09-24T17:39:41+00:00

Begin at the Very Beginning

Let's start with the obvious. It's good for people to be healthy. This is our goal. It may not be the highest goal or the most important thing in life, but it is good.

So we want health care. And we want it to be of as high a quality as we can get without sacrificing something more important. None of us want bureaucracy, although some of us think it is a necessary evil. And we, as Americans, are split wildly over how we ought to pay for this health care and over what it is going to take to improve things.

What's Wrong With Health Care?

Let me start by acknowledging that a lot is right with our health care. Many, many sick people do, in fact, get better, which is what matters most. We have cures that people in the 14th century would kill for. There may be 36 countries ahead of us on the World Health Organization's rankings, but there are four times that number of countries behind us.

So what is wrong? Well, let me put it this way. If you don't yourself have, or know someone who has, a story about billing errors that required endless phone calls to fix, misdiagnoses that led to unnecessary or harmful treatment, bills that were simply too high to ever pay, pressure from doctors to have procedures you aren't comfortable with or don't understand the reason for, complete disregard of serious medical problems by medical professionals, a child with an expensive pre-existing condition that excludes them from getting insurance, or anything else of that sort, then I want you to get down on your knees right now and say a prayer of thanks to God. And then go to HealthCareProblems.org and start reading some of the patient stories, and know that many, if not most, of those reading this article can relate to some of those stories.

I classify the problems with our health care system into three broad groups: bureaucracy, cost, and quality. Bureaucracy – such as the endless filling out of paperwork to get seen, or the difficulty of getting insurance to cover something they say they cover – is demoralizing, sometimes to the point of being degrading, but is the mildest of the three. Gut-wrenchingly unaffordable costs appears to be the most common complaint (even among the insured). Some poor quality care is presumably inevitable, but ours has gotten out of hand. Just to cite one quick example of this, an Atlantic article reports that hospitals don't want to make doctors take straightforward steps that could reduce hospital infection rates by two-thirds.

Is Uninsurance the Problem?

Most of the debate on health care boils down to a debate over how to get people insured. Whether we use the government or whether the free market is the best way to do this is debated; but it is widely assumed that the goal is universal insurance. Underlying this is the conviction that no really sick person could afford to pay their medical bills without insurance. While this is largely true under our current system, let's look at how insurance affects the three problems mentioned above.

The Problem with Third-Party Payers

A Third-Party Payer system is, briefly, one where someone besides the doctor and the patient is paying for the services that the doctor gives. Private insurance, employer insurance, and government-run insurance systems like Medicare are all third-party payers.

In order to make my point, let's imagine that we used an insurance-type system to buy groceries. I'd pay a Food Insurer (FI) a set premium each month, and they would reimburse the grocery store for whatever food I purchased. Let's imagine this became widespread. FIs would want stores to verify coverage before allowing people to walk off with food, so customers would be asked to fill out identifying paperwork before being allowed to go through the checkout. (A quick photo-copy of a current insurance card may be all that is required for repeat customers). Meanwhile, I would feel free to buy whatever food I liked without worrying about cost, meaning I'd gravitate towards buying more food or more expensive food, especially if it's advertised. Grocery stores would stop putting up price labels, since I wouldn't pay much attention to them. Stores would raise costs because I wouldn't notice; then I'd wonder why my food premiums were going up. Grocers would refuse to participate in comparisons of quality between stores, since there would be little risk of losing customers if they don't (and high risk and high effort required to keep or gain customers if they do). Without widely-read information to show me that another store offers better quality than mine, without any motivation to comparison shop for better prices, and with the disincentive of new paperwork to fill out at a new store, I would pick a convenient store and stay with it, even when the quality of the food wasn't all that great.

Do you see how this works? Bureaucracy has increased, costs have gone up, and quality has suffered under the third-party-payer model. If you would like more statistical evidence to back this up, I refer you to the Atlantic article again. The next time that you hear people talking about how to get everyone in the country insured, remember this. What we need is a nation of uninsured people.

But What Else Can We Do?

If we get rid of insurance, how can we afford to pay for medical care? Insurance (whether private or government-sponsored) is the only option, right? Right?

The simple answer is... no. We find ways to help poor people buy food without resorting to food insurance programs – through private charity like food banks and through the government food stamps program. There is no reason we cannot help people afford the health care they need without resorting to health insurance. Food Stamps works as well as it does because the money passes directly into the hands of the people who need it. Any indirect method of helping fails to thoroughly solve the problem and has unintended side effects. (In the case of food, subsidies to corn farmers – an indirect attempt to end hunger – led to corn syrup being widely used, which contributed to junk food and obesity). When people are in direct possession of the welfare funds, then they act as if they are spending their own money, instead of acting as if they are spending someone else's money. What we need is a form of welfare in which the money for health care passes directly into the hands of the people who can't afford the health care they need. The simplest way to set this up may be government-funded HSAs, to be used to purchase any medical or health-related product or service.

Are there problems with such a solution? Sure. Transitioning from our current system to one like this would be easier said than done. And it would be important to find a good way to calculate how much each person could be expected to spend on health care and how much of those expenses should come from their own income. And while most people's food needs are fairly close to an average, people's medical bills vary wildly. The welfare amount would need to increase with various diagnoses, (and age), which could lead to potentially tricky delays, or give doctors incentive to pick a diagnosis based on how much funds it receives (much as doctors currently have an incentive to pick a diagnosis based on whether insurance covers it or not). But I think that solutions to these difficulties can be found if we put good, creative and practical minds to work on it. Finding these solutions is just a matter of putting the thought, energy, and research into it.

The effects of any health care reform will be long-lasting, and it's worth our while to take the time to get this right. By getting rid of any third-party-payer system, we can put more power of choice in the hands of the people who most need it - the patients. This will put the upsides of market competition to work, driving down bureaucracy and costs, and giving care providers more incentive to increase quality for the patient. Remember this the next time you see a news article or politician lamenting the 15.4% of Americans without health coverage. They are the immediate problem precisely because we refuse to see the 84.6% of Americans with health insurance as the underlying source of our health care woes in the first place.

Making Things Up is Not Journalism

2009-08-26T14:15:08+00:00

It's a convention of discourse that if you are making something up, you make it clear that your words are fiction.

MSNBC commentators Contessa Brewer and Touré (who, like Beyoncé, affects both a one-word name and an accent mark), as educated people, surely know this. Yet they disgraced themselves—on national television—by making things up while presenting their words as facts.

The incident took place August 18, when they were commenting, along with Dylan Ratigan, on protesters who gathered at an appearance in Phoenix by President Obama. The camera zoomed in on the waist of a man who was wearing several guns to express opposition to gun control. The shot did not reveal any of the man's uncovered skin, but he was in fact African-American. Here are Brewer's astonishing words (with emphasis added):

A man at a pro-health care reform rally just outside wore an automatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip.... And the reason we're talking about this, a lot of talk here, Dylan, is 'cause yes, people feel like yes there are 2nd amendment rights, for sure, but also there are questions about whether this has racial overtones. I mean, here you have a man of color in the presidency and white people showing up with guns strapped to their waists.

Yeah, she made up the part about the individual under scrutiny being a white person. It fit the invented "racial overtones" story better. (To be fair, there were also white people with guns along with this non-white person with guns.)

Touré then siezed the baton and ran with it:

... [I]t is real that there is tremendous anger in this country about government, the way government seems to be taking over the country, anger about a black person being president. Just several upheavals in the country over the last ten years, from 9-11, to the economic tsunami, to the black man becoming president and you know, you see these hate groups rising up and this is definitely part of that.

Yeah, he made up the part about the protesters being a part of hate groups angry about a black president. They made it quite clear that they were present (guns and all) to support the rights that they feel are guaranteed under the Second Amendment. They don't like gun control, an opinion that clearly crosses racial lines.

The commentary about these protesters and their unnerving accessories is inflammatory, and the fact that they presented them as facts rather than as speculation or opinions disgusts me.

Watch the video clip:

Genetic Engineering Breakthrough: Building a Genome from Scratch

2009-08-23T15:00:13+00:00

Scientists have succeeded in building an organism's entire genome from scratch—without using existing DNA as a mechanical template. The journal Science published a paper August 20 in its online edition announcing that a research team assembled a clone of a bacterial genome inside a yeast cell, then transferred the hand-made genome into a bacteria cell with its own genome* removed.†

The achievement does not qualify as an first artificial lifeform. The genome was an exact replica of an existing, natural genome (that of the bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides), and the resulting cell was entirely natural in origin, except for the synthetic genome.

The person behind the research is J. Craig Venter, who also helped speed up the Human Genome Project that was completed in 2007 2000. Venter was also the first person to publish his own entire genome—all six billion letters. (EDIT: The Human Genome Project was completed in 2000, not 2007; that was the year Venter published his own genome.)

* A genome is the complete set of genetic instructions—DNA or occasionally RNA—that acts as the blueprint for an organism.

†The abstract does not actually state that the receiving cell had its genome removed. Since I can only access the abstract and not the entire paper, I cannot confirm that the team took this step; however, there is no other possible way they could have succeeded in the way they described, so I made the inference.

Can You Be Catholic and Deny the Faith?

2009-08-20T11:36:01+00:00

Over at Catholic Answers Forums, there is a threat entitled, "Can You Be Christian and Deny the Trinity?" Mannyfit75, who started the thread, wrote, "IMO, I do not think a Christian who denies the Trinity is a Christian." Other comments have included the following:

"You aren't Christian if you deny the Trinity." —tobinatorstark

"[S]ince pretty much every single heresy in the early Church revolved around the question of Who God Is, and namely around the Trinity, no, one cannot be a Christian and deny the Trinity." —Gregory Watson

"Since the Trinity IS God, if you deny the Trinity you are denying Christ (who is Second Person of the Trinity) by definition. . .and if you deny Christ, how can you claim to follow Him?" —Tantum ergo

I think there are really two questions here: is an individual who denies the Trinity really a Christian, and is a church (congregation, denomination, community of believers) whose doctrines deny the Trinity really Christian? The original question, however, appears to apply to an individual. And in that case, I profoundly disagree with the commenters I quoted.

To be a Christian, there is only one requirement: to have been validly baptized.

In L'Osservatore Romano, Fr. Luis Ladaria, S.J., notes that "doctrinal errors usually do not invalidate baptism," a Church position dating at least to the third century A.D.—before even the first Council of Nicea.1 The Catholic Church considers any baptism done with the proper words and intention to be valid, which is why converts from Protestant denominations are not re-baptized.2

If, at the time of baptism or at any time afterward, a person denies the Trinity or any other essential Christian doctrine, he still never ceases to be Christian. If a baptized person individual begins to worship Germanic pagan gods, or commits fully to the faith of atheism, she nevertheless remains a member of the Body of Christ.

For Catholic Christians, this applies even more specifically: Once you are baptized as a Catholic, or (after non-Catholic baptism) make a profession of faith and enter the Catholic Church, you are always a Catholic. You can be ordained a Protestant minister, commit to serving Allah through Islam, or even become the Dalai Lama. But you are still a Catholic.

There is no way out. The Catholic Church is like the Mafia that way.

Notes

1. "The Question of the Validity of Baptism Conferred in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints," published August 1, 2003. Accessed online from the EWTN website.

2. My parish's adult formation director would insist on a technical clarification here: those leaving a non-Catholic Christian Church to enter full communion with the Catholic Church are not properly called converts—that term is reserved for non-Christians entering the Church. But it's a convenient term to use.

Image information: "Christain" by Jon. (CC) Some rights reserved.

What do you think? Can you be a Catholic if you deny any doctrine of the Faith? Can a Christian deny the Trinity?

The Uncaused Cause

2009-08-12T13:22:45+00:00

Lately I have been ruminating on a particular one of St. Thomas Aquinas' proofs for the existence of God: the First Cause, also called the Uncaused Cause. I once met an undergraduate in a beginning philosophy class who declared this proof to be self-contradictory: if every effect has a cause, then there cannot be an uncaused cause. I don't think she understood what Aquinas meant. I'm not sure I do either, but here is what I do understand:

The natural world can be defined as that which we perceive with our senses. In the natural world, it can be observed that every event results from some other event; i.e. there is a cause for every effect. Therefore, there exists a chain of causality stretching an unknown time before the present.

However, since every natural effect has a cause, this chain cannot be infinite. Therefore, there must exist some uncaused cause to start the chain, also known as the first cause. I will call it Tuc (for the uncaused cause). Tuc cannot be a part of the natural world because all things in the natural world have a cause. Therefore, Tuc exists in an "extranatural" world.

Because Tuc's world allows phenomena to be agents (causes) while being free from the restriction of having causes, it is in a sense superior to the natural world. Tuc's world can therefore be described as "supernatural," or above the natural. (Whew, got rid of that neologism!)

We also observe that phenhomena have as their cause either an event arising from natural laws, or an agent with free will. While there is debate as to whether free will really exists in the natural world, at the least it can be conceived of as an alternative to a mindless natural event.

By definition, natural events are subject to natural law, and therefore they all have causes. By definition, Tuc does not have a cause. Therefore, Tuc is not a natural event. Therefore, Tuc must instead be an agent with free will.

If the universe is always and consistently rational, then a mindless phenomenon cannot be free. It must be subject to rational laws. A phenomenon with free will must therefore have a mind. Therefore, Tuc has a mind, i.e., Tuc is a person.

Christians happen to identify Tuc as the same being as God. They don't just conjure God up as a cop-out explanation for the mysteries of nature; they arrive at the conclusion through a deductive process. It is also my favorite logical proof for God's existence.

This line of reasoning absolutely depends on the assumption that the universe is rational and consistent. Since you can't prove a negative, this is not a proven statement. (But without it, there is no point in using reason to learn about the universe anyway.) It also depends on the definition of the natural world as the set of all things we perceive with the senses, and only those things. (And it does not strictly define "senses.")

What other unproven assumptions, if any, do you think this argument has? Do you feel the reasoning is flawed at any point? Leave your thoughts in a comment below!