Posted on 11/26/2004 10:24:02 AM PST by skellmeyer
Killing your customer is generally not good for business. It is amazing how many people don’t understand this.
Take, for instance, the French. The November 24th issue of Medical News Today reports on French abortion advocates who argue that French women encounter many obstacles when seeking an abortion. Abortion units have closed in 40% of private clinics in Paris for financial reasons and the number of doctors willing to do abortions is decreasing. According to certain lights, this is a Bad Thing. What Medical News Today failed to point out was the obvious: France has a total fertility rate of 1.9. Nations require a TFR of 2.1 just to keep from depopulating itself through natural death. It apparently has not occurred to them that this may have some small bearing on the availability of abortion.
It is, perhaps, picayune to point out niggling details, but medical experts agree it is extremely difficult to abort a fetus that has never been conceived. Given that the French are barely conceiving any children at all, it is hardly surprising to discover that the demand for abortion services is not what it once was.
(Excerpt) Read more at bridegroompress.com ...
Well, I play one on the radio sometimes.
Maybe you can help with a question I was pondering in the weeks before the election. To what extent does a Catholic have a moral obligation to overcome ignorance?
Everyone has a moral obligation to overcome ignorance. If anyone refuses to investigate an issue because he suspects that he will have to change his life if he finds out the right answer, and he much prefers the sin he is in, he is as culpable for any resulting sin as he would be if he were fully informed. Indeed, the refusal to seek out Truth is a refusal to seek out God, for God is Truth. That is precisely the refusal which constitutes hell for those who have died.
Now, that having been said, there is such a thing as invincible ignorance, and that can clear you of all consequences. For instance, let's say that I was raised a Southern Baptist and I was taught from infancy that Catholics were pure evil, nothing but idolaters who would twist Scripture in order to snare me to hell.
As a result, I avoided every opportunity I had to learn what the Catholic Church taught because I didn't want to be snared by the devil. Every time I was exposed to the truth of Catholic Faith, I strenuously rejected it because I feared the truth that I saw was really just Satan twisting divine revelation in a way I couldn't detect.
Now, objectively speaking, I have rejected the truths of the Catholic Church and that would normally condemn me. But the REASON I rejected those truths was because I was a God-fearing man who desired to do only what God intended. Because of my peculiar situation, I had no way of knowing nor any way of learning that the Catholic Faith is Truth and that it is indeed where God wants me to be. Thus, I actually have a GREAT shot at heaven. This is not due to my ignorance, it is despite my ignorance.
Oddly enough, the Catholics who failed to correctly proclaim the Gospel to this poor Southern Baptist are the ones more likely to be subject to hell, or at least Purgatory. They had a duty to proclaim the Faith in a way that he would know and embrace, and they failed in that duty.
The same thing would apply here. If the person was raised a socialist or had no access to the Internet or was deeply influenced by college liberals/MSM to such an extent that he could no longer reason clearly, and instead just knee-jerked to every minimum wage law that came along, he isn't going to be culpable.
However, his teachers might well be.
That seems to set the bar too low! I understand the example of the Baptist, but I don't see that it transfers to the socialist. If it did, they'd be admitting that socialism is a religion ... and if they're believers in the religion of Socialism, they can't be believers in the religion of Catholicism.
Isn't the support of socialist policies, when it's been shown that these are not beneficial to those in need, really a form of idolatry ... worship of the State, just like Rome's emperor cult?
What's crystal clear to me and you may be very unclear to them. After all, this is not strictly a matter of logic. It is also a matter of sin. My sins prevent me from seeing certain truths clearly.
We all like to think we are nice people. Let's say I am an alcoholic. I am predisposed to consciously think of myself as a good person. I may admit that I drink, even sometimes to excess, but I won't admit that my drinking puts my life and the lives of others in danger. My sins prevent me from seeing the reality of what I'm doing to myself and everyone else.
I might have an underlying discomfort with the way I act, but the dissonance between the fantasy I'm insisting on and the reality I'm living is probably not strong enough to rise above the level of discomfort. As long as that is true, it doesn't matter what graphs and charts you show me - I am convinced they don't apply to me.
The same goes for the socialist. Sure, socialism is a proven failure, never worked anywhere. But the socialist has a specific, distorted understanding of himself and the world that he needs to retain in order to maintain the fantasy that he's basically a good person. Thus, he will insist that those "proofs" don't apply to the particular situation he has in mind, that this time it will be different, etc.
The difference between an alcoholic and a socialist is mostly in the spelling.
Interesting. Thanks for the explanations ... now I'll need to chew on it for a while!
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