Earlier this week, Protestant author and blogger Rachel Held Evans conducted an interview with Sister Helena Burns about what it's like to be a nun. It was a great piece, and Evans' readers mostly seemed to enjoy it, but there was one part that offended some people. Sister Helena wrote:
I used to consider myself a feminist -- I think because I was searching for my true identity as a woman. Now I consider myself a woman. I don't need any labels, although I'm sympathetic to some feminist causes. I think the feminists went off when they embraced the culture of death (contraception and abortion) and in doing so denied their feminine identity, obliterated and did violence to the feminine, and, ironically, held up the male paradigm as the only good paradigm.
Some folks took umbrage at her use of Pope John Paul II's term "culture of death," particularly in reference to contraception. What on earth does contraception have to do with death?, they wondered.
I can relate. When I was first exploring Catholicism, I visited a Catholic church that had a poster that was said to contrast the "culture of life" with the "culture of death." It displayed side-by-side pictures of a dandelion and a rose. On the left, the ragged dandelion was said to indicate the contraceptive worldview; the blooming rose on the right was said to symbolize abstinence-based methods of birth control and openness to life. The fruits of this rose bush mentality were said to be secure families, long marriages, and care for the elderly; the fruits of the dandelion mentality included terms like divorce, abortion, and euthanasia.
"Talk about taking your pet issue too far!" I guffawed to my husband as I scanned the poster. I had started to think that the Church might have a few good points about the issue of artificial contraception, but I thought it was ridiculous to imply that it could lead to things like abortion, euthanasia, or poor care for the elderly.
But the images from that poster stayed with me, and kept coming to mind in the weeks and months that followed. The more I thought about what contraception is, and the more I observed its impact on society, the less crazy that poster seemed.
The first thing that clicked was the link to abortion. While not every woman who uses contraception would have an abortion or even necessarily supports the pro-choice movement, it became clear that, on a society-wide level, the widespread acceptance of contraception makes people feel like abortion is necessary. When women are told to go ahead and participate in the act that creates babies, even if they are certain that they are in no position to have a child, babies become the enemy, and women begin to feel like the only way they can have real control over their bodies is through the services of their local abortion facility.
But that was only the beginning.
The more I studied the Theology of the Body and took a look at human sexuality through the lens of millenia-old Christian teaching, the more the problems of contraceptive culture came into relief. I noticed that with abstinence-based methods of child spacing like Natural Family Planning, there remains a mental and physical openness to the potential for new life. Couples may try to avoid pregnancy, and may even be able to do so with a high degree of accuracy, but there is always an acceptance that new life could be created, an ever-present understanding that an inherent part of this most sacred of human acts is a willingness to care for any new family members God may give you through it. And, because it involves abstinence, there is an inherent element of personal sacrifice. You live daily with the reminder that life isn't about doing whatever you want, whenever you want.
In contrast, I began to see that contraception tempts us to value human life according to how it impacts us. Contraceptive culture tells us that we're entitled to the pleasurable aspects of sexuality, even if we reject any new life that could be created. It tells married couples that we can and should exercise complete control over our fertility so that we only add children to our families when we are one-hundred percent certain that we want them -- in other words, to value other human beings according to how they impact our own lives. Columnist Mark Steyn summed up this mindset well when he wrote in a 2006 article:
One consequence of abortion is that, in designating new life a matter of "choice," it made it easier to make judgments about which lives are worth it and which aren't...But it's foolish to think you can raise entire populations to make self-interested judgments about who lives and who doesn't and expect them to remain confined to three trimesters. The "right to choose" is now being extended beyond the womb: the step from convenience conception to convenience euthanasia is a short one, and the step from convenience euthanasia to compulsory euthanasia shorter still.
Though he was speaking specifically about abortion, this mentality of "convenience conception" is rooted in the acceptance of contraception. And we only need to look at history to see where this line of thinking goes: Any time a society accepts it as true that it is okay to value other human beings according to how much we want to deal with them, there will always be death. At a minimum, it leads to spiritual death, when people begin to live their lives closed to deep connections with other humans, but there is usually also bodily death, as those who cramp the lifestyles of those who are more powerful are gotten out of the way once and for all. And thus we end up in a "culture of death."
I think what initially bothered me about this term, and what probably troubled Rachel Held Evans' readers, is that it doesn't fit every single person who uses contraception. I mean, when my neighbor refilled her prescription for the Pill last week, as far as I know she didn't swing by the hospital and unplug some life support machines on the way home. I know plenty of caring, giving people who control their fertility through chemical or surgical means. But there is no question that, on a large scale, acceptance of contraception -- and the "truths" about human sexuality that go with it -- leads to a decreased respect for human life. Because as that old rose and dandelion poster showed, any time an entire culture believes that it is okay to live in a state of active rejection of the newest and most innocent human lives, it will end up being a culture of death.
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If it is a fight Catholics want, stop fighting each other and start evangelizing those who hate us. This is what St. Francis did - to seek out those who hate us most and preach the Gospel.
I found a typical front of the culture of death. If it is contraception you want to fight, and women who hate the Church because of her stance on it, start here:
http://karenknowsbest.com/2012/04/26/and-people-wonder-why-i-hate-organised-religion-so-much/
I got the ball rolling, and they have predictably hammered me for preaching about Mary and authentic sexuality. Its your turn to help me if you want. These are deeply confused and disturbed women.
We are not making sense on the level of logic to part of the literate world. If artificial contraception has a failure rate worse than NFP, then artificial birth control users may also be open to life because it, like NFP, might fail (how do we get to bash them on this detail) and parenthetically if you sterilized all of NY City, their horrific abortion rate would in fact vanish after a year but we are silent on that and yet speak on how the pill leads to abortion. We did this one issue obsession for centuries with usury, with saints denouncing whole cities for usury. Then in 1830, word went out from the Vatican in answer to dubia (questions from dioceses) that people taking moderate interest were “not to be disturbed” and overnight the obsession ended. Now Visa and others are charging very high rates for slow payers and not a blogger, not a Bishop, nor a Pope notices with any committedness (Rome seems to mention usury once a year for historical correctness purposes). Something is wrong with our propensity for obsession. Christ didn’t sound like us. He talked of other dangers but not this one and His parents had a small family and didn’t adopt.
“We did this one issue obsession for centuries with usury…”
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Well, that’s a different type of issue. I think when there is a case where entire segments of the population are being deemed sub-human, as is happening with abortion, we have a moral duty to make that an extremely high priority issue.
Have to agree with Sooo Cratic. I always find it funny (in a sad way) that the NFPers will always talk about how it’s so different from artificial birht control, and that there is a mental and physical openness to it. Yet, it’s either as reliable or more so than the pill. Hmmm…can’t have it both ways. The logical inconsistencies with the contraception argument are there and it weakens the argument.
“...when my neighbor refilled her prescription for the Pill last week, as far as I know she didn’t swing by the hospital and unplug some life support machines on the way home. I know plenty of caring, giving people who control their fertility through chemical or surgical means. But there is no question that, on a large scale, acceptance of contraception—and the “truths” about human sexuality that go with it—leads to a decreased respect for human life.
Those who are “nice people” but use the contraceptives, etc., thereby do affirm the value of contraceptives and the resulting mentality, just as those in Nazi Germany who did not speak out in any way against Nazi policies indicated their assent (grudging or not) to those policies by their silence.
Great article! I’m always nervous to use the term “culture of death” with non-Catholics, fearing I’ll come off too strong. But it’s an accurate term and I shouldn’t be afraid to call a spade a spade. And now I have this to link to if needed!
JF,
I agree with you on abortion. It’s murder. But contracepton needs the extraordinary magisterium whose function is to settle the disputable within tradition…ergo it was used in sect. 62 of EV against abortion which is now clearly infallibly condemned. Contraception is disputable as either universal ordinary magisterium or ordinary magisterium simply….interest on a loan turns out to have only been the latter whereas saints had claimed it was the former.
Executing murderers actually has a longer tradition (Gn.9:6) than any sexual issue and our last two Popes had no trouble throwing the death penalty out the window despite the catechism knowing it couldn’t. Ya can’t say tradition is trash here on this issue and gold over there on that issue. It will work with the parrots but not with committed readers.
I don’t think it is inconsistent to state the NFP openness to life and to state the effectiveness of it versus the pill. They are merely two aspects of NFP where benefit can be gained.
One of the biggest fallacies of contraceptives, especially chemical ones, is the idea of ‘safe sex.’ This attitude is not shared by NFP users, in my experience. The fundamental difference between those who use contraceptives and those who don’t is the refusal to accept the consequences of sex. This is true in marriage and outside of marriage, but is especially clear outside of marriage where the causality of sex is so dominant. NFP users have to, by definition, exercise self control in their sex lives regularly. Contraceptive users do not. They simply do what they want when they want.
Additionally, even if NFP and a contraceptive are equally effective, more pregnancies will result in contracepting couples than those using NFP. This is because frequency of sexual activity will be greater without the abstinent times and there is less concern over the consequences since it is ‘safe sex.’ Simply, if you have less sex, you’ll have less babies, imagine that!
I think one of the saddest things in our society is that we (as a society) have forgotten where babies come from.
I believe that the Blessed Mother and St Joseph used the abstain portion of NFP. I’m also unsure as to the foster care and adoption system in the ancient Roman empire….
wow. she is seriously angry.
It is a gross generalisation to say that NFPers accept the consequences of sex but contraception users do not. There are plenty of contraceptino users who are staunchly pro-life and would, if they became pregnant (I assume this is what you mean by consequences) would never consider abortion. It may not ever be an option. Using contraception (especially for a married couple)does not automatically lead to refusal to accept consequences of sex. Nor does being an NFPer always mean you accept those consequences. Unfortunately, these are the kinds of inaccurate statements that make the argument against contraception to not be taken seriously by many.
Good article. But death is not a culture. It is anti-culture. JPII’s encyclical placed “culture of death” in quotation marks. Real culture is a sign of life…death is actually a countersign of culture.
@ Jennifer
Germain Grisez, theologian and expert on Humanae Vitae and contraception, did an excellent job showing how contraception is always anti-life, and therefore intrinsically evil, but NFP is not.
It is pretty clear. The two have nothing in common.
Such a good thought provoking column. THANK YOU! We need to talk about this so much more. The more my husband and I learn about Theology of the Body the more we are in awe of this teaching. I agree completely with Sister Burns. And I was also a scoffer, but as I grew older and have witnessed the results of the sexual revolution and the devastation on my family and friends I have come to see more and more the harm that “feminism” has brought to our culture. And I was a pro abortion feminist in the 70’s! If you want to understand the Church’s teaching about contraception READ and Educate yourself and soften your heart, you’ll be amazed!
I read this quote attributed to St. Vincent de Paul: “We must love the poor, so that they won’t hate us for the good that we do for them.” I ask myself, “How do I love the poor?” For me, the answer, or at least part of the answer, is connected to staying true to the Church’s teachings on sexuality. As understand it, how I love the poor is strongly connected to how I behave when the poor can’t observe me.
Well, I think the term “culture of death” has been chosen mostly for its soundbite value. It is very doom-laden, dramatic and judgmental. That is why Ms. Fulwiler initially reacted to it as she did. That is how those who don’t accept the theology behind it will react.
I think the concept of the poster is kind of funny. I’ve spend hours over the last few trying to pull all the dandelions in our yard. They’re still popping up. The dandelion is the wrong symbol to use for sterility.
“I began to see that contraception tempts us to value human life according to how it impacts us.”
Very well-said! Brava!
“I noticed that with abstinence-based methods of child spacing like Natural Family Planning, there remains a mental and physical openness to the potential for new life. [!!!] Couples may try to avoid pregnancy, and may even be able to do so with a high degree of accuracy, [!!!] but there is always an acceptance that new life could be created, an ever-present understanding that an inherent part of this most sacred of human acts is a willingness to care for any new family members God may give you through it.”
That’s an abuse of NFP. I recommend this audio clip:
http://www.audiosancto.org/sermon/20120212-The-Sanctity-of-Marriage-The-Duty-of-Motherhood-Versus-the-Abuses-of-NFP.html
Oh, if we could see the forest for the trees. Yes, dandelions are very prolific. They develop their fertile seeds in the span of a couple of days and with the wind, they are carried far and wide. How many people know the value of a dandelion and want them in their yards? Dandelions are UNWANTED by most, that is why they can very well symbolize the culture that KILLS it’s babies.
When God created man and woman, He gave us a part in creation, to bring forward more like ourselves - like HIM. Sex is enjoyable because God wants the right two people who are as one flesh to want to continue to be as one flesh and to share their love - HIS love with yet more.
It is really pretty simple to figure it out. If you are not married, you are not wise to engage in sexual intercourse - I will boldly say you are WRONG and I am not ashamed to say so. I have been WRONG and I KNOW it, so I am not on my soap box, nor am I being hypocritical. It’s not all that hard to abstain from sex and the benefit of doing so is that you have the opportunity to discover your own self-worth without relying on temporary gratification for all the wrong reasons with all the wrong people. Trust GOD, He has a plan, not a pill.
Chad
Actually in the Bible, there is case after case of God not giving children to couples who tried forever…until late in life with some but not with all. Abraham and Sarah…Samson’s mother..,the Shunamite in 2 Kings4… and Elizabeth….and probably Esther, Huldah and the widow with two mites who doesn’t seem to have supporting children from Christ’s words.
If a modern couple have one child with severe autism, their therapy bills uncovered by insurance will have them in debt til they die unless they are wealthy. Should they abstain forever like Joseph and Mary? Aquinas said Mary had no concupiscence after the Nativity and Joseph was perhaps old. Should our modern couple abstain forever as though they had no concupiscence even though they do? Not if they fall under that group meant by Paul in I Corinthians 7:5…” Do not deprive each other, except perhaps by mutual consent for a time, to be free for prayer, but then return to one another, so that Satan may not tempt you through your lack of self-control.”
Drug companies have progressively reduced the amount of estrogen in the pill; this has resulted in a drop in the complication of blood clots. With the reduced estrogen, there has been an increase in “breakthrough ovulation” in which the estrogen level is so low that it doesn’t sufficiently suppress ovulation (i.e. it is simply a plain old ovulation). When fertilization occurs in this circumstance, implantation within the nutrient lining of the womb is prevented by the pill through a hardening of the lining of the womb. And this is an induced micro-abortion at one week of life.
Source: http://www.lifeissues.org/abortifacients/pill.html
How often does break-through ovulation occur? Nobody knows because nobody has conducted the research; anecdotal data, however, indicates that as many as 1 in 4 women who use artificial contraception for a year will have an episode of breakthrough ovulation.
Chad, you are creating a false dichotomy. My wife and I currently would be I’ll-advised to have more children, due to some health problems my wife is having. We use NFP with a very cautious interpretation of the signs.
You are suggesting we should either be abstinent, or use contraception. But, we are less likely to conceive using NFP than we would be if we used contraception. We don’t need to be fully abstinent, because we submit ourselves to God’s will. A pregnancy would be very hard on my wife, so we really don’t want it. (We’d love to have more children, we just don’t want a pregnancy.). But, we are submitting ourselves to God, understanding that if he sends us a child, that he will give us the grace to respond to the troubles that will come. If we used contraception, we would be treating each other as things to be used, rather than as persons who love, and a pregnancy would be even more likely.
Yes, abstinence is sometimes difficult, but it is something we do together and support each other in. It brings our hearts together to face the challenges together. No pill can teach you how to love.
Oops, should have addressed my comment to Soo, not to Chad. Sorry.
Del Rayva,
But you don’t have bills already owed til you die. And Scripture says, ” owe no man nothing”. So your example is different than the one I gave. Nor are you in the Chinese situation….e.g…you and your wife have at 19 years of age one child and anymore children will be ripped from your wife’s body in your province, the preborn will be murdered and you’ll be fined three times your yearly income each incident and nfp is iffy in your wife’s case….and I Cor. 7:5 is about our Chinese couple.
And spare me….the USCCB is not going to airlift her a Doctor trained in nfp to escort her through three decades of life.
Sean
Are you aware that the cell mass can split until day 14 because the cells are totipotential ...which is after implantation and thus divide into twins and souls cannot divide? Individuation and the primitive streak occur thereafter…and it’s every case because in the lab, the cell mass can be teased into twinning. Calling the first 14 days as equivalent to a real abortion is not accurate. Persons don’t divide into twins or quints etc….totipotential cell masses do. There are Catholics on both sides of this problem recorded here in “Theological Studies” by Lisa Cahill:
http://www.ts.mu.edu/content/54/54.1/54.1.6.pdf
It’s painting with a very wide brush (and also insulting to a great many innocent couples) to say that many if not most couples who use contraception would even consider abortion if a child came along that wasn’t planned. Many married couples who use contraception are simply people living in a modern economy that no longer lends itself to most families being able to afford the pursuit of large families.
In the words of St. Paul, one who does not take care of his child is “worse than an unbeliever.” If a person purposefully tries to have tons and tons of kids they know they cannot provide for, they are worse than unbelievers and tempting God. So let’s not throw stones at everyone who uses contraception. They all do not have the same motives.
On the other hand, it’s valid to say that readily available contraception make fornication and adultery easier for society in general, and that’s why its availability can be morally problematic.
Again, the forest for the trees. If you are married, you should not abstain except by agreement and that only for a time. I did not enclose it in quotes because it is paraphrased.False dichotomy? A division or the process of dividing into two mutually exclusive or contradictory groups. That division was present long before I opined. I speak not with forked tongue. I do speak for what is moral and correct. Anyone who is married is entitled to sexual relations - whether they are blessed with progeny is entirely up to God and the particulars of their bodies. I do not try to second guess God, nor am I trying to be hurtful. Married couples definitely do need to be proper stewards of the resources they have available in the care of the children they add to their family. It is irresponsible to have children when you know you cannot care for them. We do unfortunately see children born with various ailments that need special attention and again tragically, the health care system is far from humanitarian today. For what reason do doctors need to drive very expensive cars and live in palatial homes? That’s another discussion. This is about artificial contraception which is altogether injurious to women. Men too are injured by the long term ramifications when they marry a woman who may not be able to have children because of the damage done while she used the pill. The original article did a great job of pointing out the sense of license that artificial contraception introduces and that is most of the problem. Bottom line, if you don’t want children and you’re not married, don’t have sex. If you are married and don’t want children or shouldn’t get pregnant, then be very cautious to know the signs of fertility and abstain during those times. A large issue that I have not even touched is the separation of love from the act of sexual intercourse. Unwittingly and mostly even unaware that it is happening, men and women find themselves demoralized and virtual prostitutes because they have no love, only carnal sex. Virginity is precious and sacred. BOTH partners should be virgin when they approach the altar to vow forever only to one another. I frown upon the double standard because if fathers were to teach their sons to honor their bodies and not view sexuality as a trophy, then maybe more girls and boys would remain virgin.
Soo, you have not provided any argument in favor of contraception at all. Let’s take it one by one:
But you don’t have bills already owed til you die.
Sure I do. I’m over 40 and I have a 30-year mortgage. “three-score and ten is the limit of our years,” says the psalmist.
” And Scripture says, ” owe no man nothing”. “
I doubt scripture is so ungrammatical! But Jesus tells us not to worry about what we are to eat or wear. My Father in heaven has counted all the hairs on my head.
“... Nor are you in the Chinese situation….e.g…you and your wife have at 19 years of age one child and anymore children will be ripped from your wife’s body in your province, the preborn will be murdered and you’ll be fined three times your yearly income each incident and nfp is iffy in your wife’s case….and I Cor. 7:5 is about our Chinese couple.”
Sometimes NFP is iffy for us. One time we had to abstain for 65 days straight. We didn’t die, and our marriage was stronger for it.
“...And spare me….the USCCB is not going to airlift her a Doctor trained in nfp to escort her through three decades of ...”
You have stopped making any sense at all.
If that Chinese couple uses contraception for the rest of their lives, then they have a 1-.98^25 = 40% chance of conceiving another child. If they use NFP, they have a 1-.98^25= 40% chance of conceiving another child. If they use contraception, then they will be treating each other’s fertility as a disease. If they use NFP, they will be showing each other that they are willing to love each other as Christ loved the Church. If they use contraception, they will be putting a known carcinogen into her body every month for 25 years. If they use NFP, they will be working with their bodies to be integrated, whole human beings.
Del Rayva
Catholic Bible Romans 13:8 ” Owe nothing to anyone…” I was remembering fondly how a Protestant black security guard used to quote it to me (owe no man nothing) but you turned a fond memory into a gotcha. Your mortgage example for most real non debate humans would be faulty in that one is getting tax breaks yearly and innthe future an asset that can one day inter alia be a retirement income through a reverse mortgage.
If the Chinese man gets sterilized and they are careful for an initial period, the couple will produce no further children and they will live without constant fear of forced abortion and incredible fines for the next 30 years. Constant anxiety versus zero anxiety. To act otherwise, they are owed the certainty of infallibility.
No Pope will do the work of condemning sterilization in a clearly infallible form to satisfy canon 749-3 ( like ex cathedra…John Paul did a variant on it against abortion in the 1990’s by polling the world’s Bishops) because while Pope
Pius XI called sterilization mutilation in 1930, 29 Popes from 1585 til 1878 did not use that word as they affirmed the
castrati system for the papal churches throughout the papal lands. The number of Popes seeing human control over that bodily organ (29) far exceeds the number of Popes even writing about contraception in Catholic history…about 10 Popes perhaps. I don’t affirm castrati culture because the 9-12 year old boys had little say probably and could not marry later in the Church. Opera stopped it in 1800 and Pope Leo XIII stopped it in the Church in 1878. Pope Sixtus V introduced it into the Church choirs in the 1580’s. It flourished because they were well paid whether in churches or in opera.
Goodbye. Will not be responding again to you in particular because the particular gotcha was connected to a wonderful man in my past despite his wording….owe no man nothing.
Grisez and others have confirmed that the Church’s ban on contraception has been infallibly taught by the ordinary magisterium.
The case is closed.
Sooo Cratic, you’ve baked your conclusion into your premise: your remark, “Persons don’t divide into twins or quints etc…totipotential cell masses do” assumes that early-stage fertilized cells are not humans. Unsupported assertion does not an argument make.
The Cahill study you linked to, meanwhile, misstates the Catholic Church’s teaching – e.g. that the modern Church has “tended to view human life as personal from ‘conception’” based on “improved scientific data.” After all, that modern Catholic scientists rely on the latest science is not a fact that could ever have produced the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
Also, while Aquinas quibbled over the simultaneity of conception and the presence of the soul (he ended up being incorrect on that point), he also recognized that even absent a soul, ending the life of the unborn is still murder – something that is not possible for an undifferentiated cell mass.
Finally, if an unlimited number of angels can dance on the head of a needle, why can’t the fertilized matter that will soon divide into twins serve as host to multiple souls? A soul, after all, takes up no space. There is no problem here for the posiiton I outlined.
Thus, the point remains: when fertilization occurs after an instance of breakthrough ovulation, implantation within the nutrient lining of the womb is prevented by the pill through a hardening of the lining of the womb. And this is an induced micro-abortion at one week of life.
One comment “parenthetically if you sterilized all of NY” is particularly relevant because the forces that are pushing us towards universal contraception are not going to be satisfied with voluntary choice. The forces that are driving us are completely anti-human, and include such widely diverse things as global carbon taxes and mandatory vaccines. Catholic religious liberty is threatened, as it has been for many years, but this is just the beginning of the end. Everyone will have their turn in the stocks. It is happening to us first because only our Church has held to a true standard; everyone else redraws the line in the sand. It’s going to get very ugly folks. The new bedtime story will be The Hunger Games.
I’d like to add another dimension to the definition of Culture of Death. Jennifer bridged the concepts well by breaking it down and showing how the far stretch of a contracepting society could be more likely to accept euthanasia, based upon the value of life. Particularly interesting to Catholic Christians is the death of our spirituality as a living human being. This same bridge can be made between the value we put upon our living children, those society has chosen to keep and to birth. This value does not seem particularly high anymore. While children are (allowed to be) living human beings, their little spiritual souls are facing death everywhere from the impurities their parents choose to expose them to, and to teach them. Nothing saddens me more than the lacadaisical attitudes that today’s society has toward the pure innocent beauty of the minds and souls of our children, and the death to their souls by oversexualizing them. Most parents don’t think twice about this, as they continue to choose what they wish to watch, to listen to, to be entertained by. Even those trying to raise good children often wade through the muck all around us (i.e. allowing their teens to see and to discuss the likes of “the Hunger Games”), as they teach temperance directly in the midst of the impure world. While this is well and good, very few children can withstand this kind of desensitization. And the Culture of Death continues to stretch into all aspects of our lives…
As usual, the Church’s age old teaching is both wise and practical; contraception is the worst plague, in both blood and treasure ever visited upon mankind.
Catholics need to evangelize Catholics, never mind anyone else. When you have 54% of Catholics voting for a Socialist you get what you get. And I’m not even talking about Pelosi and Sebelius. Try reading “The Architects of the Culture of Death” by Donald De Marco and Benjamin Walker. It will open your eyes. Quote ” As the reader will soon find out, these architects reject the central image of Christianity and replace it with a new image, one in which humanity is the unintended result of blind, natural forces rather than a CREATION of God in his own image and, consequently, one in which human beings are purely material creatures cast into existence by indifferent nature and forced to define salvation for themselves.” Obama said he doesn’t know when life begins, I do, at conception and I’m not God. He claimed that was above his pay grade, cute. The state is replacing God and by doing so they have taken it upon themselves to let us know what our worth is. Our freedoms are being taken from us daily in the name of secular humanism and by progressive’s. Of course they’re giving out “rights” too, as they take Christian’s freedom away.
excellent, excellent article.
Sigh. Jennifer—you said this so much better than I ever could. Thank you. :]
Great post! Thanks!
Good Clear Article all should read and think about.
To contracept is to prevent life. Preventing life is in effect adhereing to the culture of death. A book to read is P. D James, “The Children of Men”. It is most likely not probable what happens in her book but it could be possible if the world continues on the course of chosing not to be incovenienced by giving life.
I think a more effective poster than the dandelion/rose would be to show the lifecycle of a butterfly (caterpillar, etc) and say, “When is this not a life”? Just because the caterpillar doesn’t look like a butterfly, doesn’t mean it isn’t the exact same organism when it looks like a caterpillar and when it looks like a butterfly. I’ve actually seen a ridiculous pro-choice poster that uses this same idea. There’s a picture of an acorn and the caption says “This is not a tree.” Then there’s a picture of an egg and it says “This is not a chicken.” The last picture is of a child in the womb and it says “This is not a person.” These are of course just a matter of semantics, which is exactly how the pro-choice side befuddles people. But the poster is visually quite effective, so we need to do a good job of effectively marketing the pro-life message.
In the article and in all the comments, I couldn’t find mention of Capital Punishment or the “Death Penalty”. And many infertile couples are using IVF. When will there be legislation to end this practice?
I think conservative religious principles, in large, is literally standing on it’s last leg, and rational thought and common sense is prevailing..thankfully!
The majority of the RCC supports pro-choice and the use of contraceptives. This small block of ultra-conservative catholics who try to speak for the WHOLE church realize this too, and know that they are fading out.
Like it or not abortion and contraceptive use will always be around and LEGAL.
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