Thursday, November 04, 2004

Sick Babies and Revisionist History

Lucy, my darling two-year-old (well, almost two), is very, very sick. Spiking a fever of 104, throwing up, coughing ... I fear she may have picked up the flu bug. Now, she's dealing with it, and we're doing things to help keep the temperature down, but I have a much bigger concern: Brendan, my six-month old. I think it's inevitable at this point that he's going to get whatever she's got. I don't see how he could avoid it.

Please remember to say a few Rosaries for the health of my kids. It's always a bit nerve-wracking to go through this, and this is the first time we've ever gone through (what appears to be) the flu. I'll just be a lot happier when they get better, when I don't have to worry about them being in pain.

Poor Lucy. She woke up in the late afternoon crying, so I held her, tried to calm her down, etc. I used some Holy Water on her and we said a few prayers together, and that was just absolutely heart-breaking. If you've never heard a two-year-old tell Mary - between sniffles and tears - that she's sick, that she needs help, that she wants to feel better, then I can't really describe it to you very well. I just thought, "Wow, I don't know any mother that could listen to that and not be moved to compassion."

I'm sure she'll be fine.

She was talking to Jesus last night, too, telling her Jesus-on-the-crucifix how sick she was - she always talks about Jesus' "owies" when she looks at the crucifix, but last night she told Jesus that she had owies too (actually, it came out, "Lucy is owie," but I think He understood).

Now if I could just get her to grasp the concept of offering up her suffering for the benefit of others ...

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Isn't historical revisionism amazing? I'm collecting a list of revised stories of history just to demonstrate the point. I'm thinking it will make an interesting study.

For example, how many history textbooks record that Christopher Columbus was a devout Catholic, a daily communicant, a devoted son of Our Lady, whose primary intention in sailing for the "new world" was blatantly missionary in character?

How many textbooks accurately report that the purpose behind the Catholic crusades was the liberation of Christians and Christian cities from Muslim oppression?

How many times have you heard the lie that Constantine made Christianity the state religion, when any cursory glance at the Edict of Milan shows that the most Constantine did was grant Christianity an equal place alongside all the pagan religions?

And again, how many times have you heard the lie that the ancient Christians, or the ancient Jews, believed the world was flat?

We've all heard the extremely high number of Jews that were killed during WWII - but how many times have we heard how many Catholics were killed by Nazis in that same conflict, how many Poles, how many ... you get the idea.

This is revisionist history. And getting all of the facts seems to be getting harder and harder.

And, in light of all the fact-hiding that has been going on for centuries by anti-Catholic historians (and I'm not just talking about religious historians - don't forget, the atheists, the Jews, the Easterners, the Buddhists, the Muslims are all very much anti-Catholic as well), isn't it odd that the biggest whopper of revisionist history that we keep hearing is "the Catholic Church suppressed the truth, burned books, silenced the opposition, and forged documents in order to rewrite history?"

That, my friends, is almost worth crying over.

(If you know of any other "historical" myths that need to be corrected, do drop me a line.)