Pro-Life: The Work of His Hands

* Centenary of Blessed Fancisco of Fatima
* An Era of Great Popes
* Breaking the Child's Self Will
* Marriage is a Sign of Christ's Covenant with His Church
* Fatima Family Forum - Letters to the Editor
* News Briefs & Comments
* I Don't Want To Go There
* Those Who Are Promoting Abortion Are Breaking All of the Commandments
* The Bible: What Protestants Don't See and What Catholics Miss
* Questions & Answers
* Our Lady of Cuapa
* Review by Fr. James Miara: A Priest is a Priest Forever
* Reverence in Church
* Blessed Mother Teresa & St. Padre Pio on Human Life
* Editorial - The Lies of the Pro-Choice Movement

The Lies of the Pro-Choice Movement

The modern pro-choice movement is the spawn of the "sexual revolution" of the 1960's, in which a few million angry college students, abandoned traditional norms of decency and the marriage bond. In its place they proposed a culture of what they termed "free love", which turned out to be a euphemism for unbridled lust; sex without responsibility or commitment.

As the world has since seen, sex without responsibility is sex without love. The "free love" of these sexual revolutionaries turned out to be not so free at all, but rather was emotionally and physically destructive on a grand scale.

The education establishment denies all this. With typically modern schizophrenia, they aggressively advertise sexuality as a no-strings-attached recreational activity, while at the same time spending all of their time warning against the risks of this behavior. Having never known the wonder of committed, life-giving conjugal love, its adherents are passing on the only knowledge of sexuality that they do know: sex as a momentarily diverting activity with an alarming collection of risks.

Consequently, says Pope Benedict, sex is taught as risk management. The wonder and beauty of conjugal love is reduced to a series of don'ts: don't get a sexually transmitted disease, don't get overly attached to your temporary "partner", and, above all, don't get pregnant.

Never mind that these dangers, real and imagined, vanish when sexual activity is relegated to its proper place, i.e., marriage. For the "children of the revolution", the traditional route is not an option.

They justify their program by claiming that, once children are taught the "safeguards" against sex's inherent "risks", they will be free to make "informed decisions" about when and how to engage in sexual activity. This is nonsense. How can children make informed decisions when they are deliberately left uninformed about the positive purpose and true beauty of the sexual act, as well as its rightful place as the consummation of marriage?

The "freeing" of sex from the marriage bond has instead resulted in the opposite of informed choice: there is a pervasive and fundamental ignorance not only of the true purpose of the sexual act, but the true meaning of conjugal love.

Sex education leads, through the treacherous sexual pragmatism of politicians and social "experts", directly to contraception, sterilization and abortion. If kids must ride their skateboards, they say, then society must mandate helmets and kneepads. In the same way, if they must experiment with sexuality, society will provide them with convenient contraception and abortion. In other words, the "culture of death" - really began as a culture of lies.

This mentality is easily the greatest boon to the pro-abortion movement. Now that love-making has been robbed of love, the fruits turn into liabilities. Children become symptoms, yet another disease that follows upon "risky sex". Abortion becomes the antidote, and the new generation flocks to it because they have never known anything else.

Sex education must be replaced by education in marriage and family; love and truth must replace statistics and risks. Children beg for guidance. It is the duty of pro-life teachers to give it to them, and explain to them why true love is never free of commitment - in the best way possible.

When Pope Benedict XVI, April 17, 2008, addressed a crowd of Catholic educators gathered at the Catholic University of America, after congratulating them on their efforts against a "crisis of faith" and a "crisis of truth", he went on to tell them why American education was failing.

"We observe today a timidity in the face of the category of the good and an aimless pursuit of novelty parading as the realization of the freedom," the Pope said. "We witness an assumption that every experience is of equal worth and a reluctance to admit imperfection and mistakes. And particularly disturbing, is the reduction of the precious and delicate area of education in sexuality to management of 'risk', bereft of any reference to the beauty of conjugal love."

We are grateful to Colin Mason, director of Media Productions at Population Research Institute (Vol. 10; No. 17) for the above insights and quotes.

Fr. John Powell, S.J., has written well: "Each and every child is sent into this world by God with a unique message to deliver, a new song to sing, a personal act of love to bestow."

It is now 40 years since Pope Paul VI, July 29, 2068, issued the encyclical letter, Humane Vitae (Of Human Life), reaffirming the teachings of the Church through the centuries that human life is sacred and artificial birth control is seriously forbidden. Each and every marriage act ("quilibet matrimoniiusus") must remain open to the transmission of life (No. 11). The false teachings of certain theologians, their dissensions to this encyclical, not being in union with the Magisterium, caused confusion for many Catholics and led to a grave weakening of faith and morals. Many now recognize that Paul VI was prophetic in warning that a disregard for true teachings on human sexual morals would lead to widespread abortion, weakening of marriage vows, disrespect for women, a breakdown in faith. This encyclical's teachings were restated and defended by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life, 1995).

By its intimate structure, the conjugal act, while most closely uniting husband and wife, capacitates them for the generation of new lives according to laws inscribed in the very being of man and of woman. By safeguarding both these essential aspects, the unitive and the procreative, the conjugal act preserves in its fullness the sense of true mutual love and its ordination toward man's most high calling to parenthood (No. 12).

It is, in fact, justly observed that a conjugal act imposed upon one's partner without regard for his or her condition and lawful desires is not a true act of love, and therefore denies an exigency of right moral order in the relationships between husband and wife. Hence, one who reflects well must also recognize that a reciprocal act of love which jeopardized the responsibility to transmit life - which God the Creator, according to particular laws, inserted therein - is in contradiction with the design constitutive of marriage and with the will of the Author of life. To use this divine gift, destroying, even if only partially, its meaning and its purpose, is to contradict the nature both of man and of woman and of their most intimate relationship, and therefore it is to contradict also the plan of God and His will. (No. 13).