How does a wooden puppet become a real boy? How does one tame a wild boy full of spirit?

These traditional sayings recur throughout the book: “disobedient children never do any good in this world”; lazy boys who never study become donkeys; beware of evil companions; “only the aged and crippled have a right to beg”; “remember that every man, rich or poor, must find something to do in this world”; and “hunger is the best cook.” The wooden son impervious to his father’s wisdom acts insolent to Geppetto; an idle Pinocchio makes excuses to avoid study and prefers to beg for food rather than work for his bread; the self-indulgent boy is easily tempted by idle amusements and evil companions that divert him from school and cheat him of his money; and the fastidious boy famished for food refuses to eat pears unless peeled. These are the traits of the wooden, obtuse puppet that changes into the real boy once he learns the invaluable lessons that Geppetto’s traditional wisdom offers youth.

The first lesson instructs the puppet in the law of moral consequences; a law that Pinocchio assumes does not exist or does not apply to him. Defying the proverbial truths, Pinocchio learns their lessons from the pain of experience rather than from respect for authority.  Hanging on a nail on a tree, caught in an animal trap, confined to a doghouse, stuck in mud, and locked in jail, Pinocchio confesses, “How many dreadful things have happened to me! And I deserved them, for I am obstinate as a mule.” Later rather than sooner Pinocchio eventually comprehends the law of consequences that leads him to the truths of the moral life. Disobeying authority and defying rules to do as he wishes and to enjoy complete freedom, Pinocchio—always running away from home—soon finds himself with a collar in a doghouse where he acknowledges another hard truth he has been evading: “If I had been willing to study and to work, if I stayed home with my poor father—I would not be here now in this lonely place, working as a watchdog for a peasant.” Pinocchio must recognize the eternal law of cause of effect that governs the moral life as well as the physical world.

Another lesson that wisdom offers youth is a sense of appreciation for the true value of precious things. Geppetto sells his only winter coat to purchase Pinocchio the primer he needs for school, but the puppet then sells this costly book to go to the puppet show while “Geppetto stayed at home shivering in his shirt sleeves.” When Fire-eater the Showman learns of Gepetto’s poverty and sacrifice for his son, he offers five gold coins for Pinocchio as a gift to his father—money that Pinocchio entrusts to the Fox and Cat who tempt him to bury it in the Field of Miracles where he is told it will multiply—Pinocchio ignoring the Cricket’s warning: “Go back home, and carry the four gold pieces you have left to your poor father, who is weeping and longing for you.” Pinocchio neither appreciates the food on the table when he refuses to eat the  pears nor the value of an education which he abandons to travel to Playland that lures him with the promise of no schools, no books, no masters, and a week with six Saturdays and one Sunday. When boys do not appreciate their fathers and mothers and the blessings of food, education, and love, they turn to doltish, brutish donkeys that have lost all refinement and sensitivity. Without the ability to tell the difference between a father and mother’s loving advice and the foolish counsel of idle companions, Pinocchio’s hard woodenness remains adamant.

However, Pinocchio finally becomes a real boy when he appreciates the patience and forgiveness of his father and mother that melt his heart. He eventually values the gift of their timeless wisdom that he sees proven by his wayward life. After nearly losing his father who is searching the seas for his lost son, Pinocchio finds Geppetto in the stomach of the shark and leads him out of the mouth, the young boy carrying the old man who cannot swim on his back: “You can come on my back, and I’ll carry you safely to the shore”— a gesture reminiscent of pious Aeneas with the weight of his father Anchises on his back as they flee from the burning of Troy. The boy who refused to study or to work engages in manual labor and weaves baskets to provide a cup of milk to this father. The puppet who put pleasure above duty and sold or lost precious gifts for idle amusements resolves, “I’ve worked until now for my father; from now on, I’ll work five hours longer every day for my kind mother.” Like pious Aeneas devoted to his aging father and like the Homeric heroes who find their lives incomplete until they repay their parents for their loving care, Pinocchio acknowledges his indebtedness and demonstrates his sense of appreciation by acquiring a good heart—the greatest lesson Geppetto and the Fairy instill in their puppet-boy. As the Fairy congratulates Pinocchio when the puppet becomes the real boy, “In return for your good heart, I forgive you all your past misdeeds. Children who love their parents, and help them when they are sick and poor, are worthy of praise and love . . . .”

The civilizing education of the home and  devotion of a loving father and mother that pass on the wisdom and moral ideals of  the ages change wooden puppets into grateful boys, grateful boys into generous men, and generous men into noble heroes with sacrificing hearts.

Dr. Mitchell A. Kalpakgian is a native of New England, the son of Armenian immigrants. He was Professor of English at Simpson College (Iowa) for 31 years. During his academic career, Dr. Kalpakgian received many academic honors, among them the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar Fellowship (Brown University, 1981); the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship (University of Kansas, 1985); and an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities Institute on Children s Literature.

In essence, Boehner is pushing a Republican policy to wrap up a debt-limitation bill and extend the Bush tax cuts in one fell swoop before the election — and before all the last-minute, crisis-oriented political machinations that would come in a lame-duck Congress, threatening another credit downgrade and leading to a business-hiring freeze and plunging stock market, all of which happened last year.

Tax-cut certainty is so vital right now because the anemic economic recovery may be moving toward deflation. That’s the message of a gold price that has collapsed by near 20 percent, falling from around $1,900 an ounce to the mid-$1,500s. With a risk-averse economy at home, and with the Greek and European financial crises abroad, the demand for dollars seems to exceed the dollar supply printed by the Fed. This could be solved by more quantitative easing. But a better approach for a system already oversupplied with unused liquidity would be the extension of tax-rate growth incentives, not more monetary pump-priming.

The uncertainty over the Bush tax cuts already has caused a number of business leaders to threaten a hiring freeze and a dampening of investment until they can figure out the after-tax cost of capital and rate of return on investment. Hiring has slowed noticeably in recent months. And a number of Wall Street economists are marking down the anemic recovery even more, suggesting that the 3 percent growth at the end of last year, which faltered to 2 percent growth in the first quarter, could be even less in the period ahead.

A bunch of CEOs have even formed their own march on Washington. Eighteen of them just wrote to Treasury man Timothy Geithner, begging him to oppose tax-rate hikes on dividends (from 15 to 45 percent) and capital gains (from 15 to near 30 percent, taking the “Buffet Rule” into account). “Equity capital is the life blood of investment and job creation for U.S. companies,” they wrote. And they argued that the administration’s tax-hike plans would do great harm to American competitiveness and capital formation.

According to accounting firm Ernst & Young, the top U.S. integrated tax rate on corporate profits and dividends is on course to hit 68.6 percent, significantly higher than all other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, as well as Brazil, Russia, India and China. Capital gains would rise to 56.7 percent.

And Boehner knows this. So he’s begun a valiant fight to get supply-side tax reform at the top of the congressional agenda well before the election. Similarly, House budget chair Paul Ryan is suggesting at least a six-month extension of the Bush tax cuts, so as not to disrupt business. (By the way, the Ryan tax-and-spending-reform budget got 41 votes in the Senate, while Obama’s budget got none.)

In a recent interview, former top Obama economic advisor Larry Summers told me the U.S. recovery is going “ahead of schedule.” Really? But former Obama economist Austan Goolsbee gives a more realistic assessment by referring to a subpar 2 percent forecast that is way too slow to spark faster job creation.

Bizarrely, some 25 million people have vanished from the labor force — from unemployment, underemployment or simply dropping out all together. And half of U.S. households are now on some form of federal-transfer-payment assistance. So as we pay so many people not to work, we’re sapping the vitality of the economy.

Mitt Romney recently gave a fine speech blasting Obama’s profligate spend-and-borrow policies. He described “a prairie fire of debt sweeping across Iowa and the nation,” and he tied our newfound debt to the “tepid recovery.”

But lower spending alone, while important, is not going to solve the economic-growth problem. Yes, moving spending to 20 percent of gross domestic product from 24 percent will free up private resources. But lower tax-rate incentives on the extra dollar earned and invested is a more powerful economic-growth tool. Romney should push his 20 percent tax-rate-reduction plan. That would add liquidity to fight deflation and would provide new economic-growth incentives.

As for John Boehner’s goal of an early extension of the Bush tax cuts, it’s going to be an uphill climb. Democrats want to raise taxes, not cut them. But at least the GOP will have a coherent growth-and-jobs message. They can tell the public how important it is to avoid falling off the massive tax cliff that looms ahead. Deflationary fears can ease. And they can make it plain to voters that the GOP has a growth message in these perilous economic times, while the Obama Democrats do not.

To find out more about Lawrence Kudlow and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

~An excerpt from Fr. John Bartunek’s “The Better Part”

By contrast the U.S. economy continues to improve on a number of fronts. Housing is the latest important contributor to turn positive. ISI Economics points out that their housing affordability index is at a record high. New home sales in the first quarter were the strongest in several years, and the improvement continued into April. Good weather in much of the country certainly helped, but the housing recovery is fueled primarily by improving personal incomes, job situations, and consumer confidence. The National Association of Homebuilders index corroborates the improving conditions in housing. Strength was broad based, and prospective buyer traffic was at the highest level since April 2007. With banks showing increasing willingness to lend to consumers we expect the housing sector to shift into a higher gear. Evidence that the turn in the manufacturing sector is real is provided by the continuing number of American manufacturers relocating back to the U.S. The decline in gasoline costs suggests that consumer inflation will be subdued after the run-up earlier. Our economy is advancing in an increasing number of areas.

We think the intense focus on Europe’s deficit problems, and fears of them spreading to the U.S. are unfounded, and will be dispelled as the divergent trends become more apparent. The U.S. economic advance is self-sustaining, and will strengthen as 2012 moves along.

Cover Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons

I mean, let’s face it: abortions do not always go as planned. The operation itself is extremely risky and dangerous. I myself am a first-responder here inVirginia. I and many of my fellow paramedics have been exposed to the horrors of our city’s abortion clinic at one time or another, either directly or indirectly. Our city’s Fire and Rescue departments receive multiple 911 emergency calls from that clinic every month. Despite the fact that this clinic must be shut down due to its health and safety issues, I am simply writing this to expose to you another side of abortion and its negative fallout, particularly on first-responders. Many people believe that, besides a women’s immediate family and friends, the only other people exposed to the procedure are the doctors and nurses at the clinic and hospital. Yet, has anyone ever wondered how the bleeding woman [following a botched abortion procedure] was transported to the hospital in the first place? EMS professionals such as myself and many of my friends are the ones who have to deal with the abortion before the doctors do. We are simply providing physical care for the women as we transport her to the hospital. That explains why she is usually in a more “stable” state when she arrives.

Can you imagine what it is like arriving onto the scene of a botched abortion? One of my fellow paramedics told me just the other day that he and his crew had to run a call for a woman who had just undergone an abortion. As he started to tell me the story, he grew very quiet and eventually trailed off into silence. I won’t give any details of the accounts like this but my observations have led me to believe that no one knows just exactly how to describe dealing with a post-abortion victim. The entire ordeal is very traumatic, especially for first-responders. We are often taken for granted and some of us eventually just lose any feeling of fear, disgust, or sympathy for the victims we deal with on a day-to-day basis. It is simply by nature of our line of work: we see horrific car accidents and burn victims all the time and at one point, you just don’t feel anything for them anymore. That is why people never hear from first-responders about, say, abortion clinic victims. It’s just simply something that doesn’t cross your mind because, as a paramedic, you’re used to it.

I myself still remember to this day my first fatality. I will never forget that call. It must have been about 3 AM and we were all racing towards the hospital, jostling around in the back of the ambulance. I was performing CPR and chest compressions on a man who had just suffered a heart attack. Performing CPR in the back of a moving ambulance at 3’oclock in the morning with very little sleep and a man’s life hanging in the balance, well, let’s just say it’s not exactly the easiest thing to cope with. I was still relatively new and inexperienced as a paramedic but what struck me the most about this particular incident was what the medic next to me said. I still remember looking at the monitor on the AED and seeing his heart rate beating in time to my compressions. The guy holding this man’s IV was next to me and he pointed at the monitor as I continued CPR. He said to me: “You see that, rookie? That’s you. That’s all you. You’re what’s keeping him alive.” I don’t think that medic’s words really sunk in until later that day, after we had gotten the victim to the hospital, when I learned that the man didn’t make it. You see, ladies and gentlemen, first-responders might try to push these kinds of memories out of their heads, but we all know that we will never forget them. It is truer in cases of abortions. I once heard it described as the most traumatic thing anyone can ever witness in their lifetime. I believe it.

Abortion is a terrible thing and even more terrible are the repercussions that it creates. First-responders are often times the only witnesses to the death of a botched-abortion victim, yet they always remain silent. Well not today. You have heard my story. You now know that we hold on to these things. Please, if you or anyone you know is in touch with a firefighter or paramedic, do not hesitate to ask them if they want to talk about their experiences. It is very similar to what a soldier goes through with post traumatic stress. Oftentimes, first-responders are still hurting from traumatic abortion-related calls; they just don’t want to think about it. Abortion hurts everyone and it’s about time that first responders started speaking out. If we could get more people to give their first-hand accounts, to really open up about their darkest memories, maybe, just maybe, we can end this curse of abortion once and for all. You see, my fellow Catholics, oftentimes it is those who are there for us who are also secretly in need themselves.  Please pray for me, my fellow first-responders, and all those who stand ready to serve and protect those who are in need.

Thomas Aveni is a Lieutenant first-responder (paramedic) with the Greater Manassas Volunteer Rescue Squad. He currently resides in Manassas,Virginia. 

“The cognitive revolution of the past thirty years provides a different perspective on our lives, one that emphasizes the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connections over individual choice, moral intuition over abstract logic, perceptiveness over I.Q.”

The term “hardwired” is a frequent shorthand for this new approach. For example, commenting on negative political advertising, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, remarked that “there appears to be something hard-wired into humans that gives special attention to negative information… I think it’s evolutionary biology.”*

When emotion is considered to be “hardwired” to prevail over reason and experience, it is no surprise if some researchers demonize or marginalize voters with opposing views and call it “science.”

Most social science researchers who currently engage in this tactic are progressives. Self-confessed liberal psychologist Nathan Heflick puts it like this, “psychology would be foolish to not at least acknowledge that a field dominated by liberals, that has organizations taking liberal moral positions, does not suffer scientifically.” Foolish indeed, when we consider the evidence.

Heflick worries that research that challenges dominant political positions in the field will not get published, or even submitted. True, and there is a commensurate problem with what does get published. Much research into voter opinion seems structured to explain why progressives are better and smarter than conservatives. In “Born This Way: The new weird science of hardwired political identity” (2012), Sasha Issenberg advises us that conservatives are turned on by “their own disgust” and liberals just like being turned on, period. And that University of California, Berkeley, psychologist Jack Block:

“compared personality attributes of nursery school children with their political orientation 20 years later, and found kids considered ‘self-reliant, energetic, somewhat dominating’ grew up to be liberals, while those described as ‘easily victimized, easily offended, rigid’ grew up to be conservatives.”

A survey article informs us that:

“Most of the research literature … suggests that conservatives are more easily threatened, more likely to perceive the world as dangerous, and less trusting in comparison with liberals.”

Similarly, it was announced in 2010, “Scientists Find ‘Liberal Gene,’”supposedly DRD4 but that “subjects were only more likely to have leanings to the left if they were also socially active during adolescence.” The gene has not been heard from again.

We are also told that “People who consider themselves liberals or atheists tend to have higher IQs than those who are more religious or conservative.” Other experts questioned these findings because of the a study author’s “idiosyncratic” definition of liberals as “caring about people who are not genetically related to them.” And it is perhaps relevant that the researcher, Satoshi Kanazawa, has come under fire for claiming that science also shows that black women are less attractive. That was a bridge too far for Psychology Today, which removed his article from their site as a result. But most such studies are disseminated in popular media far more often than they are questioned, and from a political perspective that is what really matters.

Sometimes, the underlying agenda sounds far from liberal. What about cheek swabs to determine politics? From science writer Issenberg: One editor of an anthology of evolutionary politics, Man Is by Nature a Political Animal, “predicts that within ten years saliva swabs will identify a genetic link explaining why some individuals welcome immigration while others respond violently to it,” due to an evolved fear of pathogens.

As Tom Jacobs slyly puts it, “The implication — presumably unintentional, but still stinging to some — is that conservatives are somehow emotionally impaired, and vaguely inferior to the more open-minded people on the left.” The self-congratulatory reek is all the more offensive because psychology journals have come under serious fire recently for non-reproducible findings. In Chronicle of Higher Education, Tom Bartlett reports,

“A group of researchers have already begun what they’ve dubbed the Reproducibility Project, which aims to replicate every study from those three journals for that one year. The project is part of Open Science Framework, a group interested in scientific values, and its stated mission is to ‘estimate the reproducibility of a sample of studies from the scientific literature.’ This is a more polite way of saying ‘We want to see how much of what gets published turns out to be bunk.’”

Whether reproducible—on its own terms—or not, what makes this stuff bunk is: Voters’ reasonable interpretation of their own experience is dismissed as irrelevant.

For example, voters may reasonably fear that immigration, particularly illegal immigration, could cost them their jobs (or raise their taxes). Researchers who strongly favor immigration themselves respond by ruling reason off the table and locating typically conservative voter opposition in evolution, neurons, or genes. The Association for Psychological Science’s 2012 conference in Chicago headlined two papers that take neuron or gene approaches to political positions.

Does it matter? The main problem isn’t that this partisan nonsense is hurtful to conservatives, but that its emphasis on supposed hard wiring and emotion over context and reason is unlikely to be compatible in the long run with representative government.

* quoted in David Berlinski “On the Origins of the Mind”, in Bruce L. Gordon and William A. Dembski, The Nature of Nature: Examining the Role of Naturalism in Science (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2011), p. 713–14.

Denyse O’Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

While symbols may portray a higher reality, we would still need a
transforming experience of the Holy Spirit. It would be this
experience that would help us recognize the Holy Spirit initially
encountered in the sacraments. That is why development is an on-going
process, a re-creative process making us new and whole again.

Today, we see renewal movements like Focolare, marriage encounter,
Neocatechumenate, family advocacy groups, Life in the Spirit Seminars,
silent retreats, etc. These movements help people experience the Holy
Spirit resulting in positive changes in their lives.

When asked if they received the Holy Spirit when they became
believers, the disciples in Ephesus answered, “No, we were never even
told there was such a thing as Holy Spirit.” That’s because it is only
through Jesus that the Holy Spirit can come to us.

The relationship aspect with God which Christ came to restore in
humankind is precisely that relationship shared by the Holy Trinity as
community. The Holy Spirit is the bond of love that exists to confer
the gift of peace which Jesus does to his followers. We can only have
peace if we truly seek it in the Holy Spirit but it does not come
easy. Jesus, however, assures us: “Be brave. I have conquered the
world.”

On returning to Norfolk, he worked briefly as a steward for a wealthy man, but left this position to travel again, making a pilgrimage to St. Giles in France and to Rome. For a while, Godric spent time in the wilderness, living the monastic life with another devout soul named Godwin. They had met while on pilgrimage. Both being devoted to God and desiring to lead the life of hermits, they retired to the wilderness where they spent their days praying and living austere lives. After a brief illness, Godwin died and so Godric again traveled to Jerusalem. He then retired to the desert of Finchale near the Wear River. There he practiced daily devotions, praying the psalms and other prayers. For sixty-three years he remained in the desert, but spent the last several years prior to his death confined to bed by illness and old age. On May 21, 1170, the Lord took the humble and pious St. Godric to be with Him.

Saint Godric was buried in the chapel that he had built in honor of St. John the Baptist. Many miracles took place that confirmed his sainthood. Later Richard, brother to the bishop of Durham, built a chapel in honor of St. Godric.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, help us to not only admire the spiritual values of others, but to seek the same values in our own lives. Forgive us for the time that we waste pursuing worldly pleasure. May we always remember that our goal is heaven and not the things of this world and live our lives seeking Your Kingdom. Amen.

Other Saints We Remember Today

St. Christopher Magallanes, Priest and Companions (1915-1928), Martyrs

St. Andrew Bobola (1657), Priest, Martyr