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We Give Thanks

We have to thank Our Sunday Visitor for the Thanksgiving prayer the Scheidlers, all 32 of us around the family table, will be saying at our Thanksgiving Day meal in the old Scheidler home.

Deo Gratias

The prayer is as follows:

Lord, we thank you for the goodness of our people and for the spirit of justice that fills this nation. We thank you for the beauty and fullness of the land and the challenge of our cities. We thank you for our work and our rest, for one another and for our homes. We thank you Lord (here each member of the family who wishes to mention a particular good he or she is especially thankful for). For all that we have spoken and for all that we keep in our hearts, accept our thanksgiving on this day. We pray and give thanks through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Then we recite together Psalm 34, verses 2 through 5, a traditional psalm of thanksgiving:

I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together! I sought the Lord, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.

Then follows the usual blessing we say at all meals:

Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The job is to get all 32 Scheidlers together in one room and then to try to get a few of them to mention what they are especially thankful for. The problem is, each of us has received so many blessings that it’s hard to single out a single gift. God is good.

Adult Stem Cell Breakthrough

It appears that a team of scientists from Japan and the U.S. have discovered the equivalent of an embryonic stem cell, but created from ordinary skin cells. This breakthrough could eventually produces treatments of various diseases without having to use human embryos.

The Japanese/U.S. research team proves that a simple lab technique can rival the complex and highly controversial idea of extracting stem cells from cloned embryos. It is being called a landmark achievement. Laurie Zoloth of Northwestern University said it redefines the ethical terrain, and Father Thomas Berg, a Catholic priest with the Westchester Institute, says it is a win-win discovery for everyone.

One of the team of developers of this technique, James Thomson of Wisconsin, says the technique is so simple that thousands of laboratories in the U.S. can do this technique tomorrow.

Will this new technique halt the demand for human embryonic stem cell experiments? It could, in time, but it probably won’t. There are still scientists who insist on using live embryos for their experiments, and even seem to resent this new development because it may delay funding for their research using human embryos.

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