6/22/24

Saturday, June 22, 2024

1633 Galileo Galilei recanted his heretical position that the Earth orbits the Sun.

1944 US President Franklin Roosevelt signed the "GI Bill of Rights." 

In bed at 9, I was awakened by a call from Cam Wakeman at 9:30 returning one of the several messages I had left earlier asking her to call me about EGFIII.  I was awake at 2:15 with a very nasty pain in my back, left side, mid- and lower.  It took fully half an hour to sit up, and then stand up with the walker for support, put on my slippers, and get out of the bedroom and out to the hallway.  I let Lilly out at 3:05 during a temporary lull in an active thunderstorm.  From 3 o'clock onward, she has been nervously pacing around the house while I try to assemble and write down thoughts about Ed, our history, and our friendship over 65 years.  I was torn yesterday as I am this morning between the desire to drive to Palos Heights to visit him with Cam and the recognition of my health limitations, not only crippling back pain, but bladder and bowel issues, leg strength, and vision problems.  I think of not being with Kitty in her last days, the stressful, punishing trip back to Milwaukee from Phoenix in September 2021, and the trip to and from Lynn's wake on October 19, 2023, especially the drive back partially in the dark, the lane-changing semi that almost hit us on the Tri-State Tollway. . . I dozed off at some point and woke up at 7:45, with Lilly finally sleeping peacefully next to her TV room mattress, but she woke up as soon as I stood up from the recliner.  I  took my multiple morning pills at 8:08 and set my alarm for 1 hour to take my BP.  The BP was 138/81.

Prednisone, day 41, 15 mg., day 5.   I took my 15 mg. at 5:30 and had a can of cream of asparagus soup at 5:50 with the glucose reading at 125.  At 8:15, it was 203>.  At 9:45, it was 191>.

Anniversaries.  First, Galileo was forced to recant his theory of heliocentrism, i.e., that the earth revolves around the sun rather than vice versa.  It took 359 years for the Church, which rejected heliocentrism based on Holy Scripture, to acknowledge that Galileo was correct and the Roman Inquisition was wrong.  While the two situations are not at all alike, one involving science and fact, the other morals and opinion, I am reminded of Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae in which he condemned birth control, other than by 'rhythm' or 'natural family planning', were sinful.  The culprit behind Paul's rejection of overwhelming scientific authority was Cardinal Woytoya who would become Pope John Paul II who argued that the Church had to protect its magisterium or teaching authority.  To accept artificial birth control after long condemning it as sinful would support the argument that the Church didn't know what it was talking about:

“If it should be declared that contraception is not evil in itself, then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit had been on the side of the Protestant churches in 1930 (when the encyclical Casti Connubi was promulgated) and in 1951 (Pius XII’s address delivered before the Society of Hematologists in the year the pope died). 

“It should likewise have to be admitted that for a half a century the Spirit failed to protect Pius XI, Pius XII, and a large part of the Catholic hierarchy from a very serious error. This would mean that the leaders of the Church, acting with extreme imprudence, had condemned thousands of innocent human acts, forbidding, under pain of eternal damnation, a practice which would now be sanctioned. The fact can neither be denied nor ignored that these same acts would now he declared licit on the grounds of principles cited by the Protestants, which popes and bishops have either condemned or at least not approved” [Emphasis added by me.]

Cardinal Wojtyla’s warning took root in Paul VI’s thinking, for in the ensuing encyclical, Paul wrote:  “However, the conclusions arrived at by the Commission could not be considered by Us as definitive and absolutely certain, dispensing Us from the duty of examining personally this serious question.  This was all the more necessary because, within the Commission itself, there was not complete agreement concerning the moral norms to be proposed, and especially because certain approaches and criteria for a solution to this question had emerged which were at variance with the moral doctrine on marriage constantly taught by the magisterium of the Church.” 

Second, the anniversary of the GI Bill reminds me of how much my position and status in life owe to government financing and the nation's desire for a large and lethal military force: the NROTC scholarship to get through college away from home  and the Vietnam GI Bill to get through law school.  If I had received that assistance for other than military service, it would be called "socialism" and disparaged. 

Thinking of Ed Felsenthal.  I spent a good part of the day writing thoughts and recollections of Ed and mourning that I am about to lose another very good friend, indeed my longest, 65 years.

Dinner with the Lowes at the Goldbergs tonight.   Warm, wonderful, 3 and 1/2 hours of good, intelligent conversation among six good friends.