Posted on 08/27/2010 6:52:49 AM PDT by markomalley
Having seen an inordinate number of eloquent commentaries delineating the moral evils of the recent United States District Court decision nullifying the will of California voters on Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage, I am nonetheless left wondering why none of the commentators was able to connect the dots.
Obviously, same-sex “marriage” or even same-sex “civil unions” are a bad idea, particularly if legitimized by a court system that previously put its stamp of approval on contraception and abortion. But why isn’t anyone pointing out the obvious root cause of this latest moral and legal debacle? Why isn’t anyone hammering on contraception?
In April of this year, months before this decision, Jenn Giroux, executive director of HLI America, explained to readers that the public acceptance of contraception has led to (among other things) “[s]maller and more broken families, rampant homosexuality, pornography, and China’s coercive one-child policy.”
Earlier, wise teachers such as Professor Janet Smith emphatically linked a rejection of Pope Paul VI’s profoundly wise encyclical Humanae Vitae to a wide acceptance of homosexuality. In her 2003 comments, she pointed out what I believe is the real problem—one that very few will admit: “Rather than holding to the Christian and common sense view that sex belongs within marriage between a male and a female committed to each other for life and open to children, our culture thinks that sex is quite simply for pleasure—and that almost any combination of consenting individuals may morally seek that pleasure without any commitment, without an openness to children.”
In 1998, Father John Hardon, SJ, who is sorely missed by many of us who were his students, pointed out in “Contraception: Fatal to the Faith and to Eternal Life,” “The spectacle of broken families, broken homes, divorce and annulments, abortion and the mania of homosexuality—all of this has its roots in the acceptance of contraception on a wide scale in what only two generations ago was a professed Catholic population.”
Clearly, many wise people have understood—and warned us about —the cost of contraception. But not everyone is on this page.
For example, rather than setting forth facts regarding the nature of sexual sin and its tragic consequences, many members of the Catholic clergy have either been totally silent or have said things that not only confuse fact with fiction but further marginalize Catholic teaching. This, in turn, makes Church doctrine less palatable to a sexually saturated culture, even though Catholic teaching is now and always will be worthy of belief and obedience—because it contains the fullness of truth.
During their November 2006 meeting, for example, the U.S. Catholic bishops “acknowledged that most married Catholics—96 percent, according to their own estimate—use birth control, and the bishops said they recognize that the [C]hurch’s teachings on homosexuality are contested in American society.”
Excuse me, but those percentages do not change truth. In fact, they should drive more bishops back to boldly teaching their people instead of gauging the content of their message on public acceptance of what they have to say. It’s the type of posturing that perhaps led to Cardinal Francis George, current U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops president, saying (in response to the judge’s decision allowing same-sex marriage), “Marriage between a man and a woman is the bedrock of any society. The misuse of law to change the nature of marriage undermines the common good.”
He did not say nor did he make reference to the obvious fact that this very sad state of affairs would not exist in the first place if contraception had been rejected long ago. He was simply silent on the point.
This is why I recommend that rather than dialoguing, as a whole, every Catholic bishop and every Catholic priest should be teaching, preaching and exhorting. Nobody really knows what America or its court decisions would look like today if the Catholics of this nation had been properly catechized for the past 42 years on matters pertaining to human sexuality.
What we do know is that today America and, most importantly, Catholics, are sliding toward a moral hell.
It’s high time many more Catholic leaders in the U.S. stood up and clarified the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, sinfulness and sinlessness. Why? Because the only treatment for the deadly bacteria raging through the veins of this society is a very strong dose of the same message Christ gave to His disciples a very long time ago: “Try your hardest to enter by the narrow door, because, I tell you, many will try to enter and will not succeed” (Luke 13: 24).
The narrow door is always open, and frankly, anything less than fighting tooth and nail to get there will not heal this ailing body politic we know as America.
I didn’t suggest extinguishing life merely preventing it’s creation in the first place. Anytime a choice is involved that prevents a far more serious choice from being made I err on the side of prevention. Why create a situation where such a horrible “choice” has to be made when a little self control will make it a non issue?
I should add I am staunchly against abortion and even more so when it is a result of poor choices in the first place.
It’s easy to tell the Koran is not the word of God. The book contradicts itself in later passages and then suggests that lying is an acceptable practice to defend the faith. I can’t imagine God ever suggesting it’s OK to lie for him.
“I disagree. “Contraceptives” are tools - a device or a drug - but “contraception” is an action. A gun is a tool, but shooting it is an action”
What hasn’t been stated here is that the Catholic Church says, “No ARTIFICIAL contraception is allow. They do allow “natural” means, whatever you consider that to be. I don’t see how natural is any different than taking a pill. Also, if we are suppose to allow God to decide how many children we have then wouldn’t it be wrong for a Catholic to undergo fertility treatments that are unnatural also? Seems to me if you are to accept children from God you should also accept when God doesn’t send you children. Just asking, I’m not sure what the Church’s stand on that is.
Whether or not it should be is irrelevant. It is what it is, as God designed it to be.
Part of the problem here is that people are assuming if you’re against contraception, you are forcing people to have kids.
Nope.
If for some good reason, you don’t wish to have any more kids, the good Lord gave you an easy, natural way to do that, to which the Church does not object: DON’T HAVE INTERCOURSE DURING FERTILE PERIODS.
That’s it. And if you can’t do that simple thing, I may well wonder what is wrong with your level of self-control. Do you also eat pizza at funerals? Do you also belch in Church?
So is a vasectomy a one time sin or a sin every time you have sex? What about women that have to have hysterectomies? How about tubes removed from ectopic pregnancies? I’m curious where the lines are drawn myself.
Self control is different for everyone some are better than others, that’s why we have druggies and sex addicts.
Ignore those who may think your decision is wrong.
There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who "love Nature" while deploring the "artificialities" with which "Man has spoiled 'Nature.'" The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of "Nature" -- but beavers and their dams are. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers' purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the Naturist reveals his hatred for his own race -- i.e., his own self-hatred.
--"Lazarus Long" (Robert A. Heinlein)
Of course, but that doesn’t affect the morality of the thing. If someone told you “I have no self-control when it comes to drugs”, what are you going to say to them? “Oh, well ok, have fun then.”
No, you say, “I hear ya man, but ya gotta try your best, ‘cause that stuff will mess you up.”
This is not a problem at all morally, if the procedure was done for a medically necessary purpose.
I'm no moral theologian, but basically you draw the lines as follows: when a person makes himself/herself intentionally sterile, that is where sin comes in. When the person is unintentionally sterile (defect, disease, wrong time of month) there can be no sin, because there is no intent.
I agree, ultimately only God can truly judge how significant a control you have over your own impulses. It seems like the significance of a sin depends on how strong or weak an individual is. People can become stronger of will over time but their struggle should count for something when coming to judgment.
Just as adultery would be a greater sin for me than for say a sex addict. I have much better control and should be able to resist with little effort. The addict on the other hand is a starving man at a banquet.
So what about a spouse sterilizing themselves to prevent their loved one from becoming pregnant, which puts them at risk medically?
Absolutely right, and that's a long-held principle of moral theology. Sexual sins were regarded as among the least evil because those passions were so easily stirred up. Something like treason, which took malice and forethought, was far, far worse.
Well, again I’m no priest or moral theologian. But in my opinion, when you make the decision to sterilize yourself, you’re already on shaky ground.
That’s a tough situation, but I think ultimately you have to be obedient to God rather than the docs and to side with what Christianity has always taught on this. Praying your heart out all the while. Good things come from following Him even into the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
“I don’t see anything wrong with family planning for 40+ year olds that have been married for years and have many children”
Well, family planning for people 40+ is not a common issue since most women won’t be fertile at that age anymore.
Thanks for clarifying.
“It would be just as wrong to ban contraception as it would to ban guns.”
Hmm... so should we be handing out free guns to kids like we give them free contraception?
So sorry to hear that. Father Greg is still with us, so maybe his messages are received better than I thought. Father is not wishy-washy on Church teaching, or much else for that matter, LOL.
We’re blessed to have him and Father Eddie, who was just ordained last year. He’s popular with the parish school kids, and he’s very ‘old-school’ as someone within the school told me. They meant it as a compliment :)
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