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PORTSMOUTH, VA. (Catholic Online) – “Dear Dr Denton, tell me about Love.” You may be surprised, but I hear that question a lot as I care for those in my care. We all need to love. We were made for love. In fact, we will never be happy without love.

There are many expressions of love within the multitude of relationships we are given in our lives. They are all gifts. However, there is a language limitation - our inability in English to verbally express those different kinds of love. The gift of LOVE has so many faces.

Agape means “love” (unconditional love) in Greek. This was considered a love so deep it was sacrificial. The love of Jesus for us – and the love we can have for Him – is the greatest love of all. In the Greek language there is no greater word to describe Love.

The greatest expression of that Love came on the Hill at Golgotha where Jesus poured Himself out for us. He freely gave Himself. That love, the love of Self-Gift, is the highest expression of love. The beloved disciple John wrote in his Gospel of the Father’s great love, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

Eros is a passionate love. It often involves a love of longing and engages a sensual desire, expressed within the marital embrace. However, the word “eros” can also describe an intimate love for another which is not sexual in nature as well. It is deeper than the love of friendship. For example, I (Eros) love my wife. However, she is also my very best friend.

The language of the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament reveals the beauty of that expression of erotic love as the lover proclaims “Let him kiss me with kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine. ” (Song of Songs 1:2)

Philia is another Greek word sometimes used to describe the love of friendship.  The friendship between Jonathan and David in the Old Testament is a wonderful example, “By the time David finished speaking with Saul, Jonathan’s life became bound up with David’s life; he loved him as his very self. Saul retained David on that day and did not allow him to return to his father’s house. Jonathan and David made a covenant, because Jonathan loved him as his very self.” (1Samuel18:1-3)

The Greek word Storge is the love described as natural affection. It is used to describe a love within the family structure. For example – I “storge” my sister. This would mean I have natural familial love for my sister. The admonition St Paul gave to the Christians in Rome is another good example, “Let love be sincere; hate what is evil, hold on to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; anticipate one another in showing honor.” (Romans12:9, 10)

So I love my sister, my friend, my wife, and my Lord. They are all different, yet they are all love. We do not have different words in English to make the distinctions. How we love is much greater than the one word we use. The Love of our Lord Jesus Christ for everyone of us involves all these kinds of love and so much more. In fact, all human love is elevated and transformed in and through His Love.

The Lord’s love for us is familial (storge). He is my loving friend (Philia). My Lord Jesus is also my intimate love.  He knows my most passionate thoughts and emotions (Eros). Jesus in the Pieta lies in Mary’s arms. This beautifully symbolizes the greatest love of all.  Sacrificial love, poured out Love, surrendered love, resting in the loving arms of the Mother of Pure Love. (Agape).

The love of Valentine’s Day is meant to help us come to more fully comprehend all of the above – though eros gets most of the credit. That is why this day, Valentine’s Day, means so much to us. It is a reminder of our need to be loved, and need to give love. It invites us to express our love to all whom we love - in the appropriate ways befitting the nature of the love.

As a Physician, love is often expressed in the touch of my hands to the patients placed before me. Jesus touched the lepers head and he was healed. The words have rolled through my mind since Mass last Sunday when it was proclaimed in the Gospel text (Mk 1: 40-45). Wow, the power of love and the power of touch.

Let’s consider the power of love in the touch of our hand to another in need. True Love in a touch is unconditional, intimate, one of friendship and sometimes familial. We hug a stranger and all those parts of love begin to occur.

As I walk into a patient’s room I often kiss their cheek or give them a hug or both. Why? Because I care – and because I know that the power of touch has the power to heal. If we can achieve agape love for each other then we actually have the power of God in the tips of …

Have the animals actually attempted to have sex? Do they habitually attempt to have same-gender sex? Are these penguins “attracted” to one another sexually, is theirs simply a particularly close filial bond, or are they routinely attracted to other male penguins?

Such questions about same-sex attraction and its implications for human life are at the heart of a wonderful new-ish blog by Steve Gershom, “Catholic, Gay, and Feeling Fine, Thanks.” He blogs under a pseudonym about his personal conviction and experience as a deeply Catholic man who struggles with same sex attraction (SSA). A twenty-something from New England, “Steve” graduated from a Catholic liberal arts college an intellectual with a literature degree, but now works in internet technology.

A Holy Contradiction

He uses the terms “gay” and “Catholic” in the title of his blog to quickly communicate the main issue without wholly identifying with the “gay” moniker. Instead, Steve says he prefers “same sex attraction” as the more useful term.

He details the choice of designation in the Q&A section of his blog where he shares the difficulties of living out his Catholicity in a modern world, but it all comes down to the controversy dividing the openly gay and the Church – that of identity. More on that in a moment, but Steve prefers to say “he has SSA” rather than “he is SSA.”

This is because Steve is celibate, and has always chosen to be so. I know because he was kind enough to grant me an interview recently. Although a young male with a virile baritone, he was never in the gay lifestyle and has never had a boyfriend or relationship with a man, a fact even he finds “almost literally incredible.”

“I feel as if God has kept me protected,” he says with a thankful wonder that I share, though this protection is not particularly surprising. Purity seems to be the priceless, fertile foundation from which God prefers to launch his message of love into a longing world.

The Human Struggle

“I used to think being gay meant being a different kind of person altogether — like a third gender. These days I think that it’s something I have, not something I am,” he says, but it would be a mistake to think he says this out of a belief in the superficiality of “having” same sex attraction. It is a profound, ongoing, personal conflict he no doubt shares with those within the gay lifestyle who know no other way to articulate the absolute depth of “being gay” than by equating it with “who they are.”

But this is part of what makes Steve’s struggle so poignant, because although with the Church he refuses to take on the identity of “being gay” as though it could completely define him (and his   freedom to choose celibacy proves it does not), he does so while maintaining that his SSA is so deeply rooted as to be an integral part of his personality.

“Obviously from the inside it’s something very strong. I don’t know if it’s possible to change it, because in most cases it’s extremely deeply rooted. I don’t think it’s any easier for a straight guy to imagine being attracted to men than it is for me to be attracted to women.”

Steve believes part of the reason gay activists talk and behave so militantly, sometimes violently, and most often flamboyantly toward Christians is because most Christians fail to understand that “it goes down into the core of you. To speak of SSA as though it were not deeply rooted is almost comical.”

Reaching Beyond Bigotry

The persecution and bigotry from both sides of the issue proceed, partly, from this misunderstanding. “Gay people who make it their whole identity do so because of the actual persecution they experience. They’re gay and proud of it; they’re being flamboyant to show all the bigots. Frankly, I even respect that. It’s incredibly wrongheaded, but starting from the axioms that they start from, it seems the appropriate thing to do. On the one hand discrimination [against gays] is not the same as [racial] discrimination against blacks, but I can see why gay people feel that way.” Indeed.

But the militancy and bigotry inherent on both sides also stems from the reluctance of Christians with SSA to talk freely and honestly about it, and Christians without SSA to acknowledge the prevalence of SSA in both Christian and secular society. It is a prevalence Steve calls an epidemic:

“In a sense the knowledge is improving tremendously, but religious people still talk about people with SSA as …

“I was unhappy about the marriage. I told my parents who did not agree with me, and then I sought help,” Laxmi told journalists.

She says he knew nothing of the path her life was intended to take until a few days ago when her groom’s family came to take her home with them to start her new life as Rakesh’s wife.

When her parents refused to help, Laxmi sought help from a local non-governmental organization, the Sarathi Trust in Jodhpur city.

“She got depressed. She did not like the boy and was not ready to go ahead with her parents’ decision,” Sarathi Trust worker Kriti Bharti told reporters.

Her intended husband, Rakesh only agreed to the annulment after counseling.

“It is the first example we know of a couple wed in childhood wanting the marriage to be annulled and we hope others take inspiration,” Kriti Bharti added.

As child marriages are not legal under India’s Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, both Laxmi and Rakesh signed an affidavit declaring the marriage null and void in the presence of a notary public in Jodhpur.

A recent survey found that 10 percent of girls in Rajasthan are married off before the age of 18.

There have been several cases of young girls refusing to get married in India but these are rare cases, correspondents say.

According to UNICEF, 40 percent of the world’s child marriages take place in India. Recent efforts to stop the practice mean the number of such marriages has declined.

© 2012, Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

“I was unhappy about the marriage. I told my parents who did not agree with me, and then I sought help,” Laxmi told journalists.

She says he knew nothing of the path her life was intended to take until a few days ago when her groom’s family came to take her home with them to start her new life as Rakesh’s wife.

When her parents refused to help, Laxmi sought help from a local non-governmental organization, the Sarathi Trust in Jodhpur city.

“She got depressed. She did not like the boy and was not ready to go ahead with her parents’ decision,” Sarathi Trust worker Kriti Bharti told reporters.

Her intended husband, Rakesh only agreed to the annulment after counseling.

“It is the first example we know of a couple wed in childhood wanting the marriage to be annulled and we hope others take inspiration,” Kriti Bharti added.

As child marriages are not legal under India’s Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, both Laxmi and Rakesh signed an affidavit declaring the marriage null and void in the presence of a notary public in Jodhpur.

A recent survey found that 10 percent of girls in Rajasthan are married off before the age of 18.

There have been several cases of young girls refusing to get married in India but these are rare cases, correspondents say.

According to UNICEF, 40 percent of the world’s child marriages take place in India. Recent efforts to stop the practice mean the number of such marriages has declined.

© 2012, Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

Komen founder Nancy Brinker informed the staff about McGhee’s resignation in an internal email. “For personal reasons, she feels it time to make a change,” Brinker wrote. “We are thankful she has agreed to do some project work on an ongoing basis in order to stay engaged with Komen.”

In her resignation letter, Richardson-Heron wrote that she had made the “personal decision to leave … to pursue new career opportunities,” but that it was “not an easy decision.”

Komen has tried desperately to salvage its reputation since the public backlash over its earlier decision. In February, Komen said it would pull cancer screening grants from Planned Parenthood on account that some of their clinics performed abortions.

Komen decided to restore Planned Parenthood’s eligibility for grants, but the public – on both sides of the abortion issue – had already soured on the charity for focusing on abortion politics rather than detecting and treating breast cancer.

Susan G. Komen Greater New York City postponed its annual fundraising gala because executives “were not certain about our ability to fundraise in the near term,” spokesperson Vern Calhoun said.

One company insider reportedly told the Huffington Post that “employee morale is in the toilet.” The move to defund Planned Parenthood was led by anti-abortion executive Karen Handel, then Komen’s senior vice president for public policy — who has since resigned.

“Brinker in complete meltdown,” the source told journalists. “People want her to resign but she won’t.” Brinker has declined comment.

A number of Komen affiliates are reporting lower than usual revenues, including the Baton Rouge, La., Greater Fort Worth, Texas and Southern Arizona chapters. Participation in Race for the Cure, Komen’s signature fundraising event, is down. Jaimie Leopold, the executive director of Komen Southern Arizona, told the Arizona Daily Star on Friday that its race had only raised $200,000 of its $700,000 goal so far.

“If 30 percent of the grants we want to give out won’t be funded, I think that’s a crisis, especially given the recession,” Leopold said.

© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

‽Because of the tireless efforts and teamwork of ICE officers and agents in tracking down criminal aliens and fugitives, there are 3,168 fewer criminal aliens and egregious immigration law violators in our neighborhoods across the country,” he added.

U.S. ICE said the operation included every state in the union and involved more than 1,900 of the agency†s officers and agents.

The operation comes nearly a year after ICE pledged to focus on deporting illegal immigrants with serious criminal histories, as well as those who posed national security threats.

Most of those arrested had entered the country illegally. Others had violated the terms for legally being in the United States and were subject to deportation.

More than 1,000 of the people arrested had multiple criminal convictions, the most severe cases included murder, manslaughter, drug trafficking and sexual crimes against minors.

‽These are people we do not want roaming our streets,” Morton said at a news conference.

Those arrested included an estimated 50 gang members and 149 convicted sex offenders. The cases of at least 204 of them were referred to federal prosecutors for a variety of serious charges, including illegal re-entry after deportation, a felony that can carry up to 20 years in prison.

Morton had issued guidelines last June that suggested the agency would ease up on illegal immigrants who are military veterans, elderly, in the United States since childhood or had relatives who were citizens or legal residents.

Latinos and other immigrant communities have eyed the pledges warily as the Obama administration has removed record numbers of illegal immigrants, nearly 400,000 in each of the last three years.

In sweeps, agents typically knock on doors early in the morning before people go to work.

The sweep included 116 different nationalities and represented the third such sweep under the program called Operation Cross Check. The last sweep resulted in the arrest of about 2,900 people.

© 2011, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

“Governor Herbert is an adamant supporter of rights for the unborn,” Ally Isom, a spokeswoman for the governor says. “He felt the bill appropriately allows a woman who’s facing that decision to fully weigh her options and the implications of that decision.”

The Utah decision is just the latest in the long-running national battle over abortion. Several states have passed laws imposing requirements on women before they can undergo the procedure.

In neighboring Idaho, lawmakers are now considering requiring women to undergo an ultrasound before terminating a pregnancy.

A South Dakota law passed last year also required women seeking an abortion to wait three days before having the procedure. That state’s Planned Parenthood group sued in federal court saying the law violated the equal protection and due process rights of women.

Chief Judge Karen Schreier of the U.S. District Court for South Dakota preliminarily blocked the requirement in June when she found it imposed an undue burden on women, saying that women from low-income backgrounds would need to travel long distances and couldn’t afford to go home and then return.

“We believe that a court will find the 72-hour waiting period (in Utah) is not an undue burden,” Isom said.

One difference between the two state laws is that, unlike in South Dakota where lawmakers sought to require that women wait 72 hours after first meeting with the abortion provider, Utah would allow the waiting period to begin after an initial consultation with a health professional – and the consultation doesn’t have to be with an abortion provider.

The Utah law is due to take effect on May 7. Utah is one of the most conservative in the nation and has not had a Democratic governor since 1985.

While South Dakota was the first state to pass legislation for a three-day wait in 2011, 26 states require women to wait before receiving an abortion, usually a 24-hour period.

© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

Both Justin and Avalanna played board games, signed autographs for each other. Routh was even able to lay her hands on the trademark Bieber hairdo and style it her own way.

“That was one of the best things I have ever done,” Bieber later tweeted. “She was AWESOME. Feeling really inspired right now.” Another tweet read, “Best part of my day.”

Thanks to the Jimmy Fund, Routh got a pretend marriage to Bieber last year to earn the moniker “Mrs. Bieber.” Her family created a Facebook page dedicated to somehow arranging a meeting between Routh and Bieber, and it came to be three days after Bieber tweeted the link to the WHDH segment to his more than 17 million followers.

Routh has fought against an aggressive and rare form of cancer known as ATRT for most of her short life. The disease is diagnosed in less than 30 cases per year.
Avalanna was diagnosed at 9 months old with the rare brain cancer and has undergone many surgeries over the course of her life. Last August, she put a smile on everyone’s face, when she joined the WEEI/NESN Jimmy Fund Radio-Telethon and proclaimed her love for Justin Bieber. In fact, Avalanna had the chance to “marry him” thanks to the Jimmy Fund.

The little girl has loved Bieber longer than she’s been alive, as she joked during her “date” with him. Asked how long she has been a Bieber fan, Routh replied, “Seven years. No, 80. Eighty years.”

 ”It’s wonderful,” Aileen Routh, Avalanna’s mother said. “It was another fun moment.”

Like the rest of the legion of Bieber fans, Routh was afflicted with a certain condition sweeping the world on Valentine’s Day.

“I got Bieber fever,” she told NBC News before smiling.

© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

Palo Monte is an Afro-Cuban religion that is widespread in the eastern region of Cuba, where spiritualism is practiced as well. “People say that in the morning, Santiago families go to church, and in the evening, they go to the bembé (a party that honors the orishas, (Afro-Cuban deities),” Director of the Santiago City Conservation Office Omar López says.

“We feel proud about this visit by the pope. Santiago is very actively preparing to receive him,” López says. Brigades of workers were fitting out Antonio Maceo Plaza for the mass that Benedict will celebrate there.

Pope Benedict will arrive in Santiago de Cuba on March 26. He will be received by President Raúl Castro, Havana Archbishop Jaime Ortega and other religious and government authorities.

The mass in Santiago’s plaza, which has a capacity for 250,000 people, is scheduled for the same day. The bishops issued a message inviting “the entire town” to welcome Benedict with the “warmth and enthusiasm of the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” and to participate, along with the faithful, in the masses to be held in both Santiago and Havana.

The pope will stay at a guest house built near the Basilica del Cobre, the shrine to Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, Cuba’s patron saint. The reinforced concrete building has seven bedrooms and seven bathrooms, a living room, dining room and all the necessary comforts.

“It is in a discreet place and meets all of the internal and external security requirements,” engineer Fausto Vélez says, who oversaw the construction project, which cost about $86,000.

On the morning of Tuesday the 27th, the pope will visit the shrine to Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre.

After his visit to the basilica, Pope Benedict will travel to Havana where he will meet privately with President Castro. The agenda given does not mention any contact with former president Fidel Castro, although that is a possibility.

During his second meeting with the Cuban president, the pope will introduce his entourage and Castro will introduce his closest associates and his family. One of Castro’s daughters is sexologist Mariela Castro, a tenacious advocate of sexual diversity rights.

The pope’s program will not include meetings with other churches or representatives from the world of culture, in contrast with the five-day 1998 visit by Pope John Paul II.

Like his late predecessor, who was the first pope to visit Cuba, Benedict will not meet with representatives of Afro-Cuban religions or dissident political groups that have no legal status in this country.

According to anthropologist María Elena Faguaga, people who follow Afro-Cuban religions are a majority in this Caribbean island nation.

African-based religions are a “cultural reality that the Church respects and tries to evangelize according to its mission.”

© 2011, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

It also means that treating cancer won’t be as simple as many had hoped.

In analyzing tumors in unprecedented detail, “we’re finding that the deeper you go, the more you find,” study leader Dr. Charles Swanton of the Cancer Research U.K. London Research Institute says. “It’s like going from a black-and-white television with four pixels to a color television with thousands of pixels.”

In a study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, these findings offer a reality check for “over-optimism” in the field devoted to conquering cancer with new gene-targeting drugs. Dr. Dan Longo, a deputy editor at the journal, wrote in about these findings in an editorial.

About 15 of these medicines are on the market now and hundreds more are in testing, but they have had only limited success. The new study may help explain why.

The scientists used gene sequencing to a degree that has not been done before to study primary tumors and places where they spread in four patients with advanced kidney cancer. They found that two-thirds of gene mutations they detected were not present in all areas of the same tumor and were stunned to see different mutations in the same gene from one part of a tumor to another.

A single biopsy would reveal only a minority of these mutations. The differences inside a tumor can also mean that it is able to adapt more to cancer medicines, meaning that some treatments may ultimately fail. It’s not yet clear whether doing more biopsies would improve accuracy.

The study took samples from primary renal carcinomas and associated metastatic sites. Kidney cancer, the tenth most common type of cancer in the U.K. and U.S., independent experts said that the results should apply to other cancers such as breast, lung and colon. About one out of fifty cancer patients around the world suffer from kidney cancer, according Association for International Cancer Research.

“This is an important paper,” said Dr. Gordon Mills, co-director of the Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.