Some Thoughts on Contraception

From the monthly Miles Christi newletter:

• Contraception: the chief cause of the Church’s swift decline

Contraception is certainly one of the worst problems that plague society and the Church. It is also a point where dissent to the perennial Magisterium of the Church becomes quite apparent. This opposition is found not only in many books on moral theology and in many seminaries (where future priests are formed), but also in the confessionals, where it can cause direct harm to souls. The encyclical Humanae Vitae, promulgated by Paul VI in 1968, clearly presents Church teaching on this matter.

The doctrine of the Church which recognizes contraception to be a grave sin HAS ALWAYS been anchored in the Magisterium and is therefore irreformable doctrine. It is useless to try to say that contraception is okay in certain circumstances. Contraception is, in itself, a grave sin. When it is truly a moral act of contraception, it is always seriously wrong. This is the permanent doctrine of the Church and cannot change. Priests are quite well aware of this, since the Magisterium of the last thirty years has been very firm on the matter. Many clerics, therefore, have adopted another strategy: they do not speak about it, and when they hear a confession of a sin of contraception, they act as if they hadn’t heard it, thus giving it no importance. Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, wrote of this in an article for the HLI e-newsletter:

“The beloved founder of Human Life International, Fr. Paul Marx, was not known to mince words when it came to what he called the “conspiracy of silence”... on the issue of contraception, but his insights of twenty and thirty years ago were right on target and remain true to this day. ‘Future generations,’ he said, ‘will wonder why so many Catholic bishops and priests in the West didn’t see contraception as a seminal evil and the chief çause of the Church’s swift decline.’
“There is the core issue. Priestly silence about contraception is deadly both to the Church and to our society.
“To this day the vast majority of Catholic clergy refuse to talk about contraception despite their moral obligation to do so. I can tell you that it is not only in the United States that this is the case; it is true in every part of the world. The reasons for this negligence range from outright heresy to lack of moral courage to inexcusable ignorance of the subject matter. Whatever the reason, the effect is the same: something I call clerical contraception.
“Contraception itself is a rejection of God’s sovereignty over one’s marriage and a refusal to obey the Lord’s command to ‘be fruitful and multiply.’ The priest, though not married, analogously contracepts the life-giving seed of truth when he refuses to preach the Catholic Faith — all of it. Faith comes through hearing, says St. Paul, and it is through the priestly ministry that Christ transmits the Faith to His bride, the Church, so that she can be fruitful and multiply the souls who are brought to salvation.
“This is probably the main reason why so many Catholics today contracept or sterilize themselves and see absolutely no contradiction in receiving the Eucharist every Sunday and believing themselves in perfect communion with the Church. They’ve never been admonished that it is a mortal sin to use contraception or get sterilized. They’ve never been told of the physical and spiritual danger of these practices, and they’ve never been made aware of the magnificent, life-giving alternatives that the Church offers to the ideology of infertility.
“Priests who are silent about the teaching on contraception also forget two very important things: first, priestly vocations generally come from large families. Failure to preach openness to life and generosity with children has a direct effect on how many men will be standing in the trenches with us later on. Contracepting this teaching has the same effect as contracepting the marital act: sterility. The persistent sterility of priestly vocations in the West is caused by priests who are silent about the plague of contraception among the laity and forget that their own vocations are the result of their parents’ generosity with life. Overworked priests will be reaping the fruits of their silence on contraception for a long time.
“Secondly, priestly silence about contraception has eternal consequences. The price of that silence is the loss of souls. Contracepting men and women who are not warned of their sin and who therefore do not repent of it risk the death of their immortal souls, and that is a scandal of immense proportions. To be warned is to be forewarned, especially about something so crucial. Perhaps the only danger of greater consequence is the danger to the priests themselves who don’t do their job: they risk their own spiritual deaths because in the end they will be held accountable for preaching the Church’s full message ‘in season and out of season.’
“All priests should read the Lord’s message to the prophet Ezekiel to know the high stakes of failing to preach the fullness of Christ’s teaching: ‘If I say to the wicked man, you shall surely die; and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his wicked conduct so that he may live: that wicked man shall die for his sin, but I will hold you responsible for his death’ (Ez 3:18).
“May every priest take this warning to heart!” (FR. THOMAS EUTENEUER, “Clerical Contraception,” Spirit & Life, vol. 1,no. 36, Oct 6, 2006).

Most Rev. Elio Sgreccia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has recently said that attacks against life at any stage means “marching toward a self-genocide of the human race... The weakness of the Christian community and the strength of secular society could spell disaster.” He asked Europe to reverse direction: “Until now it has accepted the culture of death, and that path leads to self-destruction.”

Ummm....

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,273834,00.html

Up To Their Old Tricks

A typical liberal tactic on the abortion front is to make an example of those who do not have a uterus. For example, in my time as the president of my college pro-life group, it was pointed out to me that I did not have a uterus. In fact it was written very clearly in chalk on a major thoroughfare of the campus, "[Qahal] does not have a uterus." I don't remember ever suggesting that I did have one, or that I needed to have one to take a position on abortion, but clearly that was the implication of the sidewalk chalk.

Well, it looks like those crazy abortionistas are up to their same old tricks. Apparently Sam Brownback doesn't have a uterus either.

Commies and the Wall Street Journal

In Pulp Fiction, Mia says that you can either be an Elvis person or a Beatles person, but you can't be both. I am not sure I buy it with rock and roll, but I don't think anyone would disagree that the same is true for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times: You are either a Journal person or a Times person, but you can't be both. That is, except for some friends of mine.

By pure happenstance and lack of any real friends, I belong to a certain social club that consists of Underhill, me, and a bunch of geriatric socialists. It provides a few moments of enjoyment and entertainment, but for the most part it is a couple hours wasted every time I attend a meeting. Last night was similar to any meeting until we started talking about the evil war and the awful president. That discussion was no different, it is how we end every meeting, but last night one member mentioned that she was a Wall Street Journal reader. I raised an eyebrow, wondering how anyone is this group would choose a source other than the Old Gray Lady. She automatically qualified her response--of course she found the WSJ's editorial section deplorable and fascist--but she admitted that the WSJ was the only major paper that actually objectively reported news. To be fair, she got back to form quickly when she added that her other "unbiased" sources of news were NPR and a government-controlled Chinese news station she gets on satellite.

I was impressed that she could distinguish NYT news from the NYT editorial section (which, even she admitted, are practically the same thing). Yet I can not understand how someone who admitted (not in these words, of course, it would have broken the socialist code) that NYT news is unreliable, exaggerated quasi-truth, could somehow support it when the same unreliable, exaggerated quasi-truth is written as an editorial.

(Similarly, after an earlier meeting, I had a conversation with a different member who would never stray from the NYT. I asked him if, without choosing which one is right and which one is wrong, he saw any problem with the fact that two papers could give such divergent stories about the same events; if he saw any problem with the fact that one had to be either reporting poorly or blantantly lying. He said that he saw no problem, because he liked the news the Times reported better. Ten minutes of circular argument later, we just had to agree that our worlds contained different news.)

The theme of the club has always been "there is no right or wrong, only each person's opinion which are equally valid and important regardless of what is actually being said", but last night was the closest someone came to saying "I know that X is the truth, but I like Y better so that is what I choose to believe." They hint at it a lot, but last night someone almost admitted it.

Von Richthofen, Armed Hordes, and James Dean

Have you guys ever seen "Rebel Without a Cause?" Well, there is one scene in the classic film that I thought about today. The scene has outlander James Dean getting involved in a little scuffle with some local boys. Well, instead of just wailing on each other like a Springer episode, two of the guys, one of whom is James Dean, (From Indiana, "Where Cool was Born"), decide to fight with knives and set up rules so that no one is permanently injured. After a few slices, they all go home and get ready to go back to school. "Cool" indeed. (BTW Axl and Slash are both from Indiana, as is our chief Justice and Jim Davis of Garfield acclaim.)

I saw this scene a long time ago and have always loved it. Two guys want to fight, they don't hate each other, they just need to fight. So they go at it with something the world used to know as "class." When I went into high school, I had probably fought with all of my friends up to that point. But when we mixed in with different groups of people, there was this us/them mentality that snuck in and now if there was a fight, it was a brawl and you might get shot.

What is it about these days where men back-stab, gang up, and if they lose, claim that they were "screwed" or cheated? There used to be rules to the game. If you got in a fight at school, you went after school to the gym and boxed. You don't take cheap shots and you don't gang up and "jump" people. When you fight, you fight for a reason and you fight with respect.

I don't really know why things are the way they are exactly. Part of it is probably sissy education. Part of it is that kids don't spend much times with their father while he is interacting with other adult men. Part of it is race and tribalism in American democracy but on a local level, I think it is due to laziness, television, and the inability of men to have friends.

Well, whatever the causes, today, May 2, is the birthday of Manfred von Richthofen, probably the greatest flying ace ever. The "Red Baron" served Germany with complete military honor and was deeply respected by all sides of WWI. He was a model soldier and patriot.

Back in those days, there was a saying amongst the old European fighters, "We kill the machine, not the man." There are stories of aces going to great lengths to not shoot the cockpit of the airplanes but to damage the engine. In many instances, after battle or capture, enemy soldiers were treated extremely well. (A good movie on this is the French film "The Grand Illusion")
Remember, in the East in WWI, the war was really between three emperors. It was an isolated land battle with non conscripted troops many of whom were led by nobility into war like the magnificent Karl I of Austria. This war was brutal, but man, these people did have class.

So, then the US gets involved and despite pleas for peace from Austria-Hungary, Wilson and his Puritanical brethren don't do anything but indoctrinate their troops, massacre an Empire, and leave Europe with a power vacuum ripe for another Austrian to take hold of a few years later. From then on, war in the West has been near total, ideological, and racial. Soldiers are to be like machines doing the will of the commander. You don't hear the same stories coming from WWII. You do hear about the US starving 1.2 Million German soldiers, the fire-bombing of Dresden, the atomic bombs in Japan, and of course the Holocaust. (Read "Monarchy and War" online by Erik Leddihn)

Fukuyama and the neo-cons say that democracies never start wars. Well, that is debateable, but they certainly know how to finish them... with a lot of innocent people dying. WWI was an insane lust for the blood of Catholics and old Europe. It was nothing more than the French Revolutionaries coming back for more death and democracy. And with that hatred and egalitarian indoctrination, nothing was sacred, not even the Churches.

When the "Red Baron" died, his pall-bearers were Australian soldiers. His death was mourned by soldiers from Germany to America. A picture of his procession led by the English is below. Americans would take their hats off when he was around. Battle to him was a chess-match between men of honor, men you want to have a cigar with afterwards, leave, and come back to fight again.

So somehow we have gone from Joe Louis to Mike Tyson, from Hank Aaron to Barry Bonds, and from Karl I to George W. I don't know how to get back, but guys like von Richthofen make me realize that we are today missing something fundamentally masculine that even some cool kid from 1950's Indiana understood but has since been, in my estimation, forgotten.


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