June 20, 2004

Acts of remembrance


Gardens are happy places, splashed with color, vibrant with life. That’s true even when the garden is a memorial.

I met a young couple recently who shared with me a very special garden in their yard, a garden dedicated to the memory of their daughter who died at birth. To respect their privacy, that’s as much as I’ll share about them, but what they created is a lesson to us all.

A lesson about life; a lesson about death; a lesson about faith.

Perhaps more to the point, it’s a lesson about memories.

Sometimes, it seems all we’ve really got are our memories: of our families, of our experiences. The older I get, the more I cherish mine.

A parent’s greatest fear is burying a child. My wife and I have five kids—all grown now. I’m writing this in the week before Father’s Day so that thought is especially alive.

People generally deal with memories in predictable ways. Some stuff the bad ones deep until they fester. Some acknowledge only the good memories. Neither is particularly healthy. Balance is important.

After all, it’s the stuff proverbs are made of: “You can’t have a rainbow without a little rain.” Or similar pithy sayings. You get my drift, I hope.

Thoughts like that raced through my head after I visited that garden.

For Father’s Day, I expect to talk to or see all the kids. Yes, some of their triumphs and troubles will flash through my head—having grown children doesn’t relieve you of parental thoughts. While I’ll celebrate the memories, good and not-so-good, I’ll also remember that we live in a world in which too many children hurt and even die, long before their time. We may not be able to change all the circumstances which cause that—weapons and war, abuse and poverty, neglect and violence—but we can remember.

That’s a powerful memorial. On Father’s Day and beyond, may your memories be like a garden, happy places, splashed with color, vibrant with life.

 

Springfield follies

Separation of church and state, already badly misunderstood, does not separate believers from their freedoms. Nor should religion be required to enact rules in contradiction to its basic tenets.

Welcome to the wonderful, wacky world of Springfield.

State law has long had a health-care insurance “conscience clause.” It sensibly says that religious organizations can’t be forced to pay for medical procedures which violate core beliefs. But a strange ruling last year by the Illinois Department of Insurance removed HMOs from the conscience clause.

Religious employers like churches, Catholic Charities and Catholic hospitals providing HMO coverage for their employees will be mandated to pay for contraceptive procedures, devices and drugs. For the Catholic Church, whose opposition to such things predates Illinois law by millennia, being forced to go against its own beliefs is a bitter pill.

A bill to restore the exemption from this unfair mandate was introduced into the General Assembly during the spring session. It passed the house, supported by the Illinois Catholic Conference.

In the senate, however, legislative slight-of-hand by Sen. Iris Martinez (D-Chicago), a Catholic, blocked the bill from the floor where, CCI believes, it would have passed. Martinez wrongly assumes that Catholic Charities is a secular organization because it serves people without regard to their faith. Such service, though, is a very Catholic tenet. By stalling it, Martinez is imposing governmental whim on religion.

By the time you read this, the legislative session should be history. It’s not a history to be proud of, when a single lawmaker believes she can define what’s a religious organization and what’s not.