Flags for Memorial Day in the United States of America. / Credit: Shutterstock
National Catholic Register, May 27, 2024 / 04:00 am (CNA).
Memorial Day marks the cultural beginning of summer in the United States, and in the midst of all the fun of the three-day weekend, it’s easy for kids to think of this holiday as representing nothing more than the end of school and the beginning of barbecue and pool party season. So here are some ideas that gently introduce children to the deeper meaning of Memorial Day.
1. Create a memorial flower boat.
This is an easy but beautiful craft that uses materials that you probably have lying around the house. Though it is based on the Navy’s tradition of floating flowers out into the ocean to recall sailors whose lives were lost at sea, it could be used to honor fallen soldiers from any branch of the military.
2. Write a letter to a soldier.
Talk to your children about what our men and women in uniform do for our country, then have them write a letter or draw a picture to send to someone who is currently in the military.
3. Take flowers to a veterans cemetery.
Check online to see if there’s a veteran’s cemetery near you. If there is, consider stopping by with a bouquet of flowers on your way to your Memorial Day plans.
4. Make a pin for a veteran you know.
If you have a friend or family member who is a veteran, have the kids make one of these pretty pins to honor the service he or she provided to our country. This is a good opportunity to talk about where this person served, why he or she was there, and to mention the fact that some of this person’s fellow soldiers were not so fortunate as to make it back home to their families.
5. Make an American flag cake.
You won’t have any problem convincing your kids to help make this Memorial Day cake that is as delicious as it is easy to put together. Working together in the kitchen is always a great opportunity for family bonding moments, and in the process of icing the cake and laying out the flag pattern, chat with your kids about what the American flag represents and all the people who have given their lives to defend it.
6. Say a prayer for the souls of departed soldiers.
The easiest suggestion of all: Simply take a few moments today and have your family pause to say a prayer for the repose of the souls of all the men and women who gave their lives in the service of our country.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Roger Foley enjoys taste-testing three different kinds of hummus, his favourite food, on the day of a video shoot with Amanda Achtman of the Dying to Meet You project in Canada. The two spoke about Foley’s difficulty accessing quality care for his needs and being offered Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) “several times.” / Courtesy of Amanda Achtman
CNA Staff, Jun 23, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Amid ongoing efforts to expand euthanasia in Canada under the name of “medical aid in dying” (MAID), one Ottawa man says he has been offered euthanasia “multiple times” as he struggles with lifelong disabilities and chronic pain from a disease called cerebellar ataxia.
Roger Foley, 49, shared some of his story in a recent video interview with Amanda Achtman of the Dying to Meet You project, which was created to “humanize our conversation on suffering, death, meaning, and hope.” The project seeks to “[restore] our cultural health when it comes to our experiences of death and dying” through speaking engagements and video campaigns.
Roger Foley, a Canadian man with disabilities, says he’s been offered euthanasia “multiple times.”
Listen to him speak out against being devalued as he fights for the support he needs to live. pic.twitter.com/yY8N4NILkS
In the video, the fourth of a series, Foley said he has struggled with subpar medical help in his own home, where he is supposed to be getting quality care. Canada has a nationalized health care system but Foley said that individuals with illnesses are “worked at … not worked with.” He spoke out against being devalued as he fights for the support he needs to live.
In one case, he said, a home worker helped him into his bathtub and then fell asleep in the other room; Foley was left to crawl out of the bathroom on his own. “I reported to the agency, and then he confessed, and the agency, they really didn’t care,” he said.
Asked by Achtman if he has ever been offered euthanasia, Foley said: “Yeah, multiple times.”
“One time, [a doctor] asked me, ‘Do you have any thoughts of self-harm?’ I’m honest with them and tell them I do think about ending my life because of what I’m going through, being prevented from the resources that I need to live safely back at home.”
“From out of nowhere, he just pulls out, ‘Well, if you don’t get self-directing funding, you can always apply for an assisted.’”
Foley said the offers from doctors to help end his life have “completely traumatized me.”
“Now it’s this overlying option where in my situation, when I say I’m suicidal, I’m met with, ‘Well, the hospital has a program to help you with that if you want to end your life.’”
“That didn’t exist before [MAID] was legalized, but now it’s there,” he said. “There is not going to be a second within the rest of my life that I’m not going to have flashbacks to [being offered suicide]. The devaluing of me and all that I am.”
Noting that he’s “not religious,” Foley said: “Saying that it’s just religious persons who oppose euthanasia in society is completely wrong.”
“These people who usually say it, they have an ableist mindset,” he said. “And they look at persons with disabilities and see us as just better off dead and a waste of resources.”
Achtman told CNA there is a need for euthanasia-free health care spaces, not only for protecting the integrity of Catholic institutions but also because many patients — including nonreligious patients like Foley — want to be treated in facilities that do not raise euthanasia with patients.
“Having euthanasia suggested, in a sense, already kills the person. It deflates a person’s sense of confidence that doctors and nurses are going to truly fight for them,” Achtman told CNA. “When euthanasia is suggested ostensibly as one ‘treatment’ option among others, there are all-too-frequently no other real options provided.
She continued: “This is why I always say that a request for euthanasia is not so much an expression of a desire to die as it is an expression of disappointment. Responding to such disappointment with real interventions that are adequate to the person is demanding, but that’s what people deserve. It is wrong to concede or capitulate to a person’s suicidal ideation — instead, every person deserves suicide prevention rather than suicide assistance.”
Roger Foley enjoys taste-testing three different kinds of hummus, his favorite food, on the day of a video shoot with Amanda Achtman of the Dying to Meet You project. The two spoke about Foley’s difficulty accessing quality care for his needs and being offered Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) “several times.”. Courtesy of Amanda Achtman
Canada has become one of the most permissive countries in the world when it comes to euthanasia. The country first began allowing doctors to help kill terminally ill patients nearing death in 2016; the law was then expanded in 2021 to include patients whose death is not imminent.
In February the country paused a proposal to allow mentally ill individuals access to MAID, with the proposal set to be reconsidered in 2027. Earlier this year, Canadian health researchers alleged that MAID will “save” the Canadian health care system between $34.7 and $136.8 million per year.
A couple in British Columbia is currently suing the provincial government, as well as a Catholic health care provider, after their daughter was denied euthanasia while suffering from a terminal illness. The suit demands that the government remove the religious exemption from the Catholic hospital that protects them from having to offer MAID.
A judge in March, meanwhile, ruled that a woman with autism could be granted her request to die by MAID, overruling efforts by the woman’s father to halt the deadly procedure.
Asked what gives him hope, Foley told Achtman that he aspires one day to “be able to break through [the health care system] and get access to the resources that I need and to live at home with workers who want to work with me and I want to work with them and that we can work as a team.”
“I have a passion to live,” he said. “I don’t want to give up my life.”
Washington D.C., Jan 29, 2020 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- In the wake of basketball star and father-of-four-daughters Kobe Bryant’s death, #GirlDad has gone viral on social media with fathers sharing the unique joy of raising daughters. However, in many parts of the world, fewer girls are born than boys today because of sex-selective abortion.
Demographics experts say that “large-scale female feticide” has also occurred in the U.S. in the last decade, in a new analysis published Jan. 27.
“These new data are worrisome, if not alarming—for they demonstrate that large-scale female feticide has been taking place among certain U.S. sub-populations over the past decade,” researchers Nicholas Eberstadt and Evan Abramsky found when they looked at U.S. birth statistics.
“The ‘global war against baby girls’ has opened a front in the United States of America,” they said.
The phenomenon of mass female feticide in Asia over the last 40 years has been driven by easily available or unconditional abortion access, cultural preferences for boys, and inexpensive prenatal gender determination technology, Eberstadt explains.
While the natural biological sex ratio at birth hovers around 103-105 boys born for every 100 baby girls, in China and India the ratios hit 115 and 111 respectively in 2017.
With the sex ratio skewed in the two most populous countries in the world, sex-selective abortion accounts for millions of “missing baby girls” each year.
Eberstadt and Abramsky’s 2020 analysis also found unnatural imbalances in sex ratios at birth in the U.S. among foreign-born mothers from China and India.
Among foreign-born Chinese mothers, more than 110 boys were born for every 100 girls in the U.S. between 2014-2018. For the third child born, this figure jumps to 122.8 for Chinese foreign-born mothers and 115.3 for Indian foreign-born mothers.
The researchers conclude this can be understood as approximately 8,400 “missing” births of newborn girls in the U.S. from Chinese and Indian mothers between 2014-2018, while the exact number of sex-selective abortions that occurred among those sub-population groups is unclear.
Eberstadt and Abramsky said that they found “some measure of reassurance” in that there was no conclusive evidence that the same sex ratio at birth (SRB) exists among Asian-Americans born in the U.S.
The abnormal trend only applies to foreign-born mothers from China and India, countries with “mass female feticide.”
This week over 100,000 people have posted photos of fathers and daughters on Instagram with #girldad in tribute to Kobe Bryant, who was the father of four girls. Bryant and his eldest daughter, Gianna, died in a helicopter accident Jan. 26, along with seven others.
The trend was sparked by ESPN analyst Elle Duncan, who shared a memory of a conversation with Bryant.
She said that she had asked Kobe Bryant if he wanted more children, even if there was a chance of having another girl, and said Bryant replied, without hesitation, “I would have 5 more girls if I could. I’m a girl dad.”
“I would have 5 more girls if I could. I’m a girl dad.”@elleduncanESPN‘s story about how much Kobe loved his daughters is something special. pic.twitter.com/1KJx17QRjY
Following the episode of Sports Center, professional athletes posted photos of themselves and their daughters online with #GirlDad, fathers across the globe followed suit.
“This is trending nationwide because there’s no greater or more significant relationship than that of a dad and his daughter(s),” Duncan wrote on Twitter Jan. 28 with a post that linked to the thousands of family photos shared with her in the past few days.
Please if you’re feeling any kind of way, scroll through this feed and look at all these PROUD #girldad ‘s .. this is trending nationwide because there’s no greater or more significant relationship than that of a dad and his daughter(s) .. i hope it eases your blues. ?? pic.twitter.com/DbUQVbVO22
Rome Newsroom, Jul 22, 2021 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Australian Catholics will need to adapt to liturgical restrictions, according to the archbishop of Melbourne, one of a number of Australian bishops to respo… […]
1 Comment
I am a veteran who served in peacetime. My service pales to the sacrifices of those who died or were disabled in wars. This article offers many ways to celebrate their memory. I would add another, visiting memorials and walls that list their names. Most memorials are in D.C.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Va.
Arlington National Cemetery, this memorial honors the women who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces.
I am a veteran who served in peacetime. My service pales to the sacrifices of those who died or were disabled in wars. This article offers many ways to celebrate their memory. I would add another, visiting memorials and walls that list their names. Most memorials are in D.C.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Va.
Arlington National Cemetery, this memorial honors the women who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces.
Korean War Veterans Memorial
World War II Memorial
Remember them in prayer.