Contraception Is The Key

“Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.”—Samuel Johnson

When reading the absurd comments of Harry Knox, who serves on President Barack Obama’s faith-based advisory council, I cannot help but think that Samuel Johnson missed a category.

In 2009, in response to the Pope’s comments about condoms and AIDS in Africa, Knox said that the Pope is “hurting people in the name of Jesus.”  This past week, Knox was asked if he stood by this statement and he answered with an emphatic “I do.”

Knox’s statement is as ignorant as it is lacking in integrity.  Why, last year even the leftist Washington Post conceded “The Pope May Be Right”:

In 2003, Norman Hearst and Sanny Chen of the University of California conducted a condom effectiveness study for the United Nations’ AIDS program and found no evidence of condoms working as a primary HIV-prevention measure in Africa. UNAIDS quietly disowned the study. (The authors eventually managed to publish their findings in the quarterly Studies in Family Planning.) Since then, major articles in other peer-reviewed journals such as the Lancet, Science and BMJ have confirmed that condoms have not worked as a primary intervention in the population-wide epidemics of Africa.

So why would an adviser to President Obama’s on faith-based issues stand by such an offensive and unscientific remark?  Why accuse the Pope, and by extension the entire Church—an organization that unarguably helps more people than any other—of hurting people in the name of Jesus?

The Washington Post article acknowledges the real reason behind the anti-papal backlash saying, “The condom has become a symbol of freedom and—along with contraception—female emancipation, so those who question condom orthodoxy are accused of being against these causes.”

Believe it or not, this is really about abortion.  Knox and others recognize, wittingly or unwittingly, that the foundation of modern sexual liberation relies upon denying or removing any of the consequences of that sinful behavior, even to the point of killing. They also know that the contraceptive mentality underpins the entire culture of death.  The contraceptive and utilitarian view of life and of procreation is the “mitochondrial Eve” from which all the horrors of the culture of death are descended.  Abortion, ESCR, and euthanasia all call contraception “mother.”

That is why any acknowledgment, no matter how trivial, obvious, or scientific, that calls into question the magic consequence-erasing power of contraception must be attacked with all vigor. 

The Catholic Church’s consistent and unbending opposition to the contraceptive culture makes it the perennial target of promoters of the culture of death.  This can also be seen in previous anti-Catholic comments by Knox on homosexuality and the Church in reference to a lesbian couple being denied communion.

“In this holy Lenten season, it is immoral and insulting to Jesus to use the body and blood of Christ the reconciler as a weapon to silence free speech and demean the love of a committed, legally married couple. The Human Rights Campaign grieves with the couple, Leah Vader and Lynne Huskinson, over this act of spiritual and emotional violence perpetrated against them.”

While Knox ostensibly and offensively comments on a different topic, lesbianism and communion, the reason remains the same . What this quote shows is that Knox’s anti-Catholicism is as strategic as it is deep-seated.  Unfortunately, President Obama hired Knox for a reason and continues to stand behind him no matter how many anti-Catholic statements he makes. President Obama supports Knox because he understands the same thing that Knox does, that the entire culture of death is built on the foundation of contraception and One doesn’t undermine the foundation when One lives in the penthouse.