Sunday, March 11, 2007

Ch-Ch-Changes   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Re: Jonah's e-mailer on the Roman Catholic Church and birth control: I'm praying for better teachers rather than new teachings. Priests, religious, and laymen and women need to be encouraged to have the Courage to be Catholic, as George Weigel put it in the book he wrote in the wake of the scandals in 2002.

If Catholic teachings on birth control were confidentally and unapologetically taught more often, more Catholics might have a real appreciation for the sense of the Catholic view of human sexuality, rather than being embarrassed by a killjoy caricature of the Catholic Church.

Pope John Paul II put contraception in context in Evangelium Vitae — accessible and relevant to all:

It is frequently asserted that contraception, if made safe and available to all, is the most effective remedy against abortion. The Catholic Church is then accused of actually promoting abortion, because she obstinately continues to teach the moral unlawfulness of contraception. When looked at carefully, this objection is clearly unfounded. It may be that many people use contraception with a view to excluding the subsequent temptation of abortion. But the negative values inherent in the "contraceptive mentality"-which is very different from responsible parenthood, lived in respect for the full truth of the conjugal act-are such that they in fact strengthen this temptation when an unwanted life is conceived. Indeed, the pro- abortion culture is especially strong precisely where the Church's teaching on contraception is rejected. Certainly, from the moral point of view contraception and abortion arespecifically different evils: the former contradicts the full truth of the sexual act as the proper expression of conjugal love, while the latter destroys the life of a human being; the former is opposed to the virtue of chastity in marriage, the latter is opposed to the virtue of justice and directly violates the divine commandment "You shall not kill".

But despite their differences of nature and moral gravity, contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree. It is true that in many cases contraception and even abortion are practised under the pressure of real- life difficulties, which nonetheless can never exonerate from striving to observe God's law fully. Still, in very many other instances such practices are rooted in a hedonistic mentality unwilling to accept responsibility in matters of sexuality, and they imply a self-centered concept of freedom, which regards procreation as an obstacle to personal fulfilment. The life which could result from a sexual encounter thus becomes an enemy to be avoided at all costs, and abortion becomes the only possible decisive response to failed contraception.

The close connection which exists, in mentality, between the practice of contraception and that of abortion is becoming increasingly obvious. It is being demonstrated in an alarming way by the development of chemical products, intrauterine devices and vaccines which, distributed with the same ease as contraceptives, really act as abortifacients in the very early stages of the development of the life of the new human being.

As it happens: Perhaps the best book ever written on the Catholic Church and sexuality was from John Paul II, before he was JPII — Love and Responsibility.

More (and more) links: www.theologyofthebody.net

I haven't read this since I wrote it, but this is from Crisis from a few years back — How Birth Control Changed America for the Worse.

03/11 08:24 PMShare