Saints Hockey Scores again!

February 1, 2008Men's hockey team defeats stereotype of men of faith...

Full story here.

Congrats to Frank for this great idea and consistant execution!

Previous Catholic Hockey news here.

Frank Makes the News

In this video, starting at about exactly the 10 minute mark, the President of the Saint Louis Blues Hockey organization reads a letter from our own Frank Hogrebe, President of the Saint Louis Saints adult hockey team. He applauds Franks and the Saints community spirit.

Way to go Frank!

For backstory on the Saints see these prior stories.

Hockey Saints

Frank is too modest to post this himself. If I make it back to Saint Louis, I'm in like Flynn.


http://www.stlouisreview.com/article.php?id=12545

Don't Lecture Me on my Vasectomy

I had a hockey game last weekend, and one of my teammates was telling a few of us on the bench that he and his wife had just had their first baby. After some high-fives and congratulations, another teammate joked about how after his first child he gave himself the best Christmas present he ever received—-a vasectomy.

Certainly this bothered me, and I made some quick pro-children comment before we all hopped the boards for a line change. But the teammate who just had the new daughter is Catholic, perhaps only nominally, and I really wanted to say something more to him. I really hoped to find some way of turning the conventional wisdom on its head. Mainly, I was interested in finding a polemic against surgical contraceptive procedures that is not too overtly Catholic--something you could easily explain over a few beers with neighbors, co-workers, teammates, Protestant friends, etc., who do not understand and/or follow the teachings of the Church in these matters.


Below is the core of the argument. Please critique/add/flesh-out/etc.

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The whole idea seems-- to use a highly technical medical term-- bass-ackwards. An unhealthy person goes to a physician when something is NOT working properly, in hopes the physician can make it work properly again. In the case of a vasectomy and other such procedures, a perfectly healthy person goes to a physician in hopes the physician can make something that IS working properly NOT work properly anymore.

Why would a healthy person go to the doctor to get unhealthy? We wouldn't do this with any other aspect of our health. "Hey, Doc, my digestive system seems to be working perfectly fine. Got any suggestions?" Or, "my immune system is in perfect health, Doc. What should I do?" Yet many people go into a doctor's office basically saying, "Well, it seems my reproductive system is working just like it's supposed to. You gotta help me, Doctor!"

Something just doesn’t seem right to me about that…

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Certainly, there is nothing new in this argument-- it's Natural Law 101, and all contraception is meant to frustrate normal, healthy reproductive processes. But unfortunately, the modern mind is not too well aquainted with Natural Law-- and so I want to work something out that can be the beginning of a dialogue.

Unborn Goalie

I meant to comment on this story much earlier. I know it will be of interest to at least Frank and I.

Here's the teaser:

"VANCOUVER -- It will go down as the greatest kick-save that Justin Pogge ever made, one he pulled off even before he was born.
His mother, Annet Pogge, figures she had been pregnant with Team Canada's star goalie at the world junior hockey tournament here for a little more than four months the night she walked to the centre of a bridge in Fort McMurray, Alta., thinking about ending it all."