Patheos Hosting Ads For Contraceptives

When I was over at Mark Shea's Patheos page updating that last link, I noticed that there was a link in the "Around the Web" section entitled Female Condoms: Will women wear them? near the bottom. It was right next to an ad for Mark Shea's book This is My Body about the Eucharist. I noticed that you can also get to it from the Elizabeth Scalia's blog posts, as in this example where she talks about going to meet the "inventors" of Patheos. I don't want to provide the link to the offending ad, but you can go to their pages and verify this and click on it their. Basically it goes to a site called "LifeScript" with a big infomercial disguised as a news article on so-called "female condoms". The page is also covered with ads for Essure, another contraceptive described as "permanent and non-surgical". Here's some text from the infomercial:

Prophylactics aren’t expected to be particularly pretty, but no one wants to have sex looking like they’re wearing their grandmother’s rain slicker. That may be why the female condom, available since the late 1990s, has never caught on in the U.S. The fact that it is visible may be a turn-off for some. But women may want to reconsider: after all, the rain-gear look trumps facing unwanted pregnancies or STDs...

The female condom — marketed as the FC — may not be alluring, but it puts protection directly into the hands of women. Produced by the Female Health Company, the FC is one of four barrier birth control methods, the other three being the cervical cap, the diaphragm and the sponge. Of these, only the FC can prevent both sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and pregnancy when properly used.

The page also contains links with text such as The Morning After Pill, Top 5 Birth Control Methods, etc. You get the idea. Here's what it looks like on Mark Shea's blog.

Here's what it looks like on the Anchoress's blog.

What do I make of all this? Well, one thing I did right away was to remove the Google AdSense ads from my blog. I realized that anything can be advertised there, and if I write the word "contraception" in a post, chances are pretty good that Adsense will throw in an ad for the morning after pill, rubbers, etc. I cut the one on the side and the one at the bottom. I'm working on the one at the top, but I forget how to access that one. I think I need to go into the template code, fun stuff — dusting off the HTML book....

I know that Mark and Ms. Scalia do not want to promote using contraceptives. And they never had to worry about accidentally doing so on their old blogs where they were their own masters. But this is what happens when you abandon you own little garden and start "working for the man" to make more money. You end up sacrificing control for a steady paycheck from the factory farm managers.

If Patheos ever extends an offer to me to blog there, I'll have to decline the offer based on this. Not that they'll ever ask me now.

There — got that pesky top ad out of there. Ad-free now. Maybe I'll advertise coffee made by monks now. Or something.

Young mom "comes out" as Pro-Life

Great story. She was afraid her Pro-Life views might offend her liberal parents. After all, they wanted her to get an abortion when she got pregnant at 17 years of age. Excerpt:

Sorry to break the news, folks. I’m pro-life for many, many reasons. Yes, I do believe that the Bible is clear about this issue. But for me, I just have a hard time ignoring the scientific facts. I have a hard time believing that the testimonies of people who have worked in the abortion industry are “fake.” I know that those pictures of aborted children aren’t Photoshopped. I know countless women who regret their abortions. My mother-in-law hung out with Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade. Norma, who helped make abortion legal, is now pro-life!

I mean, come on, guys. I have yet to meet someone who has made the switch from pro-life to pro-choice and has medical evidence to back up his or her claim.

Contemplate serenely, people

Mark Shea posted a Tom Tomorrow strip over on his blog, but I'm not concerned with the content of that, nor any metadata for that matter. What caught my eye was this "poem" in the comment box.

THE STRONG AND FEARLESS

While the dying fighters
bleed to death all over

In Syria,
Afghanistan

A heavy bee hangs
swaying on a stalk of clover

In the sunny garden

Contemplate serenely
the size and scale of it

The little to the
big

Maybe I should cut down on the amount of mockery I engage in, but stuff like this doesn't make it easy. I have produced a lot of similar material, but it was mostly in high school. Mostly, I say. Some of it was in junior high.

Just remembered a similar post.

UPDATE: Tom just pointed out that I didn't click the SEE MORE link to see the "Rrrrrrrrrrrest of the poem" as Paul Harvey might say. I think the poets lack of punctuation is at least partly to blame for my missing this. So here it is the rest so you can read it in all it's glory:

And if some grave misfortune troubles you a bit

Feed it to the pigs

For nothing is a bother or too serious

Until it reaches where you are

There may be spreading and malignant crisis

But it is afternoon and it is far

But I say watch and listen if you come awake

From your late June sleep

You may think a false alarm is only a mistake

But the strong and fearless weep

Pavel
June 19, 2013

Sad

R. I. P., James Gandolfini.

Really Insightful Thoughts from Tom

Our friend Tom at Disputations has some great insights into the somewhat misguided reasons that some non-Catholics are "into" Pope Francis currently. Here are my favorite parts:

Of course, it's not only younger Evangelicals. Plenty of older Catholics think Pope Francis confirms them in their ignorance of liturgy and deprecation of tradition. And it's certainly better for Evangelicals to be favorably disposed toward the Pope than not.

This article, though, makes the reasons for the favorable disposition sound pretty shallow:

As Pope Francis accepts his role, a new generation of evangelicals accepts theirs. As young evangelicals have rejected the megachurch and the televangelist and embraced a more rugged, grassroots Christianity, these actions by the pope fit perfectly. He has refused to live in the massive papal quarters in Rome and has chosen to live in the guesthouse, instead. One of his first actions as pope was to cancel his newspaper subscription at his home in Buenos Aires.

They sound, in short, just like the superficial reasons so many Catholics give for their own favorable disposition.

One of our parish priests praised Pope Francis, not from the pulpit but in a private conversation, for "fundamentally changing the Papacy" within 48 hours of becoming Pope. There's a word for that kind of rhetoric: hysterical. And I like that priest; he doesn't generally say nutty things. I think one of the problems is that he is letting the news networks tell him how to view anything newsworthy with regard to the Catholic faith, e.g., the election of a Pope.

Yes, I get that you have to start somewhere. I am merely pointing out that if you start at "I understand what this guy is doing," then you are at great risk of remaining there. If Evangelicals like Pope Francis because he seems more like an Evangelical to them than other popes, then they are at great risk of either not really hearing how he is not like an Evangelical or of falling back to disinterest or worse when the honeymoon ends and he turns out to be Catholic. (I've already used the expression "the Spirit of Pope Francis" in connection with the disillusionment Catholics who speak wistfully of the Spirit of Vatican II will come to feel as this papacy continues. And, God help us, the Church is still recovering from a generation of young Catholics who knew which rules shouldn't exist.)

Sad, but true. People who see discontinuity between PEB16 and PF1 are headed for a huge disappointment down the road, I'm afraid.

Moreover, he refers several times to Pope Francis's humility as a feature that attracts. But it isn't his humility as such that attracts; otherwise every humble pope would be popular. Anyone who is unaware of Pope Emeritus Benedict's humility wasn't paying attention -- which, yes, is part of the point: Pope Francis's actions draw the attention of Evangelicals in a way Pope Benedict's did not. But the author doesn't merely like that Pope Francis exhibits humility, he likes that Pope Francis exhibits humility in a way that Evangelicals notice. He seems unaware that there are other ways of exhibiting humility, in particular that it can take just as much humility to follow a papal tradition as to break it, or that Christ-like character can be found in leadership styles Evangelicals might not wish for.

Emphasis mine. Truth is I'm trying really, really hard to like Pope Francis, and I don't dislike him; I don't find anything wrong with him. It's just that I really, really miss Pope Benedict. I guess I need to "leave some room for the Holy Spirit", right?

Important SCCB News Items

Erin Manning/Red Cardigan has a couple of news items everyone should be aware of. First of all, her lawnmower died. So if you have an extra one, please ship it to her primary residence immediately.

Secondly—and she begins this one with the word "CAUTION", so pay attention—she is going on sort of a summer blogging partial semi-hiatus vacation kind of thingy. So I'm designating myself to pick up the slack for And Sometimes Tea here at Est Quod Est. If you've been reading her blog and you need an extra dose of blogginess, kick in on over here where we're just getting started with Summer Party 2013, 24/7.



So "clench up" everybody!

Refresher course.

What a Wonderful World

That's what WWW stands for. What a Wonderful World.



This tune came out in October 1967. I was four months old, man.

For no reason that I'm aware of...

Space Mosquito by Los Straightjackets.



They possess a sort of crazy genius, IMHO.