Tag: technology

On
Fr. Donald Lange

Technology can help the pro-life movement

On January 22, 1973, the United Supreme Court gave our nation Roe v. Wade and its companion decision, Doe v. Bolton. In so doing, it effectively removed every legal protection from human beings prior to birth.

Since then, millions of lives have been destroyed before birth and even during the process of being born. Countless women have been traumatized so deeply by abortion that for years they struggle to find peace, healing, and reconciliation. Men grieve too because they could not “choose” to protect a child they helped bring into existence.

Society has increasingly been coarsened by toleration and acceptance of acts that purposely destroy human life.

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On
Audrey Mettel Fixmer

Continuing education in our senior years

“Guess who is using a calculator these days?” said my husband Bob, as he set down his suitcase just inside the front door. “My mother!”

No! Not the woman who stubbornly maintained that not while she had the brains God gave her . . .

This was back in the late 60s or early 70s when Bob was traveling on business trips that rarely took him in the vicinity of his parents’ Illinois home, and now he recounted the happy visit when he was able to give them one of the calculators his company issued and teach them how to use it.

“I wish you could have seen how delighted they were with their new ‘toy’ after I taught them how to use it.”

Pleasant reminder

I was reminded of that incident recently when I visited my son Tom and his wife in Colorado.

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On
Jean Mueller

Living independently involves many aspects

Q My dad is in his early 90s and fortunately has enjoyed really good health.

He lives alone since my mother died and is doing a great job of caring for himself.

I visit twice a week and have lunch with him and check up on things, but he is really a good role model for maintaining independence.

As his only child, I want to make sure I am not missing anything related to his health and well-being.

Are there things that need to be in place to assure he can stay in his home?

I guess what I am asking is what is out there for older individuals to help them stay safe?

(From a daughter in Columbus)

A You bring up a great point, and fortunately, there is a great deal of information and support in this area.

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On
Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk

Editing our genes? We must be vigilant about use of new techniques

A number of serious diseases are known to occur because of defects or mutations in our DNA.

Curing such diseases could in principle be carried out by rewriting the DNA to fix the mutated base pairs. Yet until recently, scientists have remained largely stymied in their attempts to directly modify genes in a living animal.

New gene-editing technique

Findings described in the March 30, 2014, issue of Nature Biotechnology, however, reveal that a novel gene-editing technique, known as CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), can be used successfully in mice to reverse disease symptoms for a liver defect known as type I tyrosinemia. In humans, this potentially fatal ailment affects about one in 100,000 people.

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On
Audrey Mettel Fixmer

Living in a changing world

grand mom

I grew up with clear notions of what kind of “old lady” I wanted to be.

I would have a pleasant relationship with my grandchildren and not always be criticizing them for wearing nail polish. I wouldn’t complain all the time about my arthritis and ulcers and tell them they didn’t need all that education because they “were just going to get married anyway.” I would keep up with the times.

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On
Vicky Lamberty

Why convert?

Q:Why are parishes required to eventually convert to ParishSOFT and QuickBooks? We like our current program.

A: Parishes are currently using dozens of different software programs. Each program has different fields and different reports and it’s like we’re speaking different languages between us. It’s very important for all the parishes in the diocese to be using the same programs so the data is predictable and consistent. For instance, coding a parishioner as Active in one parish does not mean the same thing to another but our goal is that in the future, it will. We need to speak the same language with the data and terms so we both can use it to communicate with parishioners.

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