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Fast food? Fat chance

29 Mar 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In this Sunday’s gospel Jesus uses images of fruit and wheat to bring home his message. Young people, however, might get the picture more quickly if he had spoken of Big Macs and Whoppers instead. According to a new study from the University of California-Berkeley and Columbia University, teenagers who go to a school with a fast-food restaurant within walking distance have a significantly higher probability of obesity. The presence of a fast-food outlet within easy walking distance of a high school—about 530 feet or less—resulted in a 5.2 percent increase in the incidence of student obesity compared with the average for California youths. ”Fast food offers the most calories per price compared to other restaurants, and that’s combined with a high temptation factor for students,” said Stefano DellaVigna, a U.C.-Berkeley economist and one of the paper’s authors. “I get ice cream, French fries, double cheeseburgers, all that stuff,” said ninth-grader Anyea Wilson of Fullerton Union High School in California. “I know it’s not very good for you, but I eat it because that is the closest place to school.” Blaming restaurants for the nation’s weight problem, however, strikes many as misguided, experts say. Obesity can be a product of a variety of factors, including genetics, lack of exercise, and household nutrition. But the finding that students who are constantly exposed to fast food are more likely to be fat “should not be a surprise,” said Brenda Roche, a registered dietitian at U.C. Cooperative Extension in Los Angeles County. "If you put a McDonald’s in front of a school, kids will eat there,” she said. “Obesity is as much a factor of environment as it is a matter of choice.” Source: An article by Jerry Hirsch for the Los Angeles Times

teenagers mcdonald’s brenda roche stefano dellavigna obesity high school columbia university university of california-berkeley fast food

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Armed and dangerous

26 Apr 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The disciples were "startled and terrified" when the risen Lord stood in their midst, we read in the gospel this Sunday. Ten years after students at Colorado's Columbine High School were terrified by two heavily armed students who killed 12 fellow students, a teacher, and themselves, a survey suggests that support for stricter gun laws has diminished rather than grown in recent years, despite a steady stream of other gun massacres. For a time, the carnage at Columbine--and the ease with which the teenagers acquired high-powered weapons--seemed to usher in a new era of support for greater regulation of firearms. But in recent years support has waned. A poll released last week by CNN showed that support for stricter gun laws was at an all-time low, with only 39 percent of respondents in favor. Eight years ago that number was 54 percent. Texas lawmakers are mulling a new law that would allow college students to carry firearms on campus. Utah already makes this practice legal. Another law up for debate in Texas would prohibit most companies from barring employees from keeping guns in their cars in company parking lots. In Montana, only last-minute compromise stripped a new law of language that would have given residents the right to carry concealed weapons with or without a permit. Since 2003 at least eight states have either passed new laws giving most residents the right to carry concealed handguns or changed existing laws to make it harder for state officials to deny those permits, according to a 2008 study in the Yale Law & Policy Review. In the past couple of years another trend has taken root, too: the expansion of the so-called Castle Doctrine, a legal theory enshrined in common law. It is used to justify deadly force in the defense of one's home, although it's usually interpreted to include a duty to try to avoid confrontation if one can. Last year the Supreme Court struck down what had been the strictest gun-control ordinance in the country, the ban on handguns in murder-plagued Washington, D.C. Source: Articles by Michael A. Lindenberger for TIME and Catherine Tsai for Associated Press

gun control supreme court deadly force castle doctrine texas state laws laws gun laws guns columbine high school

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Homily stories

15 Feb 2009 - Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

The day after 8th grade my family moved, and all summer long I missed my friends back in the city. So I invited my friend Billy to spend the weekend. Our visit was a bit stilted at first; at 13 we were both changing so drastically. After walking around my new neighborhood (where I knew no one), and playing some card games Billy had learned since I had moved, it was time to get ready for bed. Trying to be casual, Billy asked, “You don’t sleep with a teddy bear, do you?” “Heck no!” I replied, wondering if I’d hid my stuffed animals well enough in the back closet. “Oh,” replied Billy. “I hope it doesn’t bother you that I brought mine along.” He pulled a small, worn bear from his overnight bag. I felt horrible! I’d betrayed my best buddy and was still too afraid of appearing un-cool to do the right thing and drag out my own favorite teddy bear. The rest of the weekend I felt a rift between us. Years later, we met at our high-school reunion. It was great seeing Billy, now a police lieutenant and a good man. We spent the whole time catching up and joking around like old times. Driving home, I reflected on all the time with Billy I’d lost—all because of fear.

Authors Tom McGrath

betrayed friends teddy bear high school

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Homily stories

20 May 2018 - Solemnity of Pentecost, Cycle B

"To be alive, and feeling free, and to have everyone in our family!” Forty young guys sang out those words at the top of our voices. We were on retreat in our senior year of high school. We’d had a tumultuous four years together during which time Vatican II turned the church upside down, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated, and our basketball team had a thrilling season going all the way to state finals. We’d also had our share of conflicts with one another—the jocks versus the honors students versus the tough kids versus the rest of us who just blended into the woodwork. And yet after an amazing series of retreat talks and exercises, the barriers between us crumbled, and we discovered extreme joy in the fact of our unity. Black and white we sang. Asian and Hispanic we sang. We discovered that we were jocks and scholars and nerds and hard guys no more. We were the senior class, and we were filled with the Spirit. We all came down from the high, of course, during the last weeks of school. But we were changed. We knew something about ourselves and each other that we hadn’t known before the retreat. Our future lay ahead of us. We were alive, and free, and everyone was in our family. We’d had our own mini-Pentecost.

Authors Tom McGrath

retreat high school

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