Posted on 08/18/2006 9:50:48 AM PDT by Huber
In an extraordinary and prophetic newspaper column, Rockford's Bishop Thomas Doran tells us what God really thinks of "abortion, buggery, contraception, divorce, euthanasia, feminism of the radical type, and genetic experimentation and mutilation." Read on:
Reaping the whirlwind of abortion
I want to touch on this matter before we get too close to the November madness. As human beings, as citizens of a “first world country,” as Americans, and as Catholics, most importantly, we have to take count of the circumstances in which we live. We know that the only creatures of God that outlast time are those created having intellect and will. All other things, with the passage of time, break up or break down.
Many of the issues that confront us are serious, and we know by now that the political parties in our country are at loggerheads as to how to solve them. We know, for instance, that adherents of one political party would place us squarely on the road to suicide as a people.
The seven “sacraments” of their secular culture are abortion, buggery, contraception, divorce, euthanasia, feminism of the radical type, and genetic experimentation and mutilation. These things they unabashedly espouse, profess and promote. Their continuance in public office is a clear and present danger to our survival as a nation.
Since the mid-1940s we have been accustomed to look askance at Germans. They were protagonists of the Second World War and so responsible for fifty million deaths. We say, “How awful,” and yet in our country we have, for the most part, allowed the party of death and the court system it has produced to eliminate, since 1973, upwards of forty million of our fellow citizens without allowing them to see the light of day. They have done their best to make ours a true culture of death. No doubt, we shall soon outstrip the Nazis in doing human beings to death.
I do not think that we should spend a great deal of time in lamentation over the children whose lives have been snuffed out by the barbaric practice of therapeutic abortion. They passed from their lives quickly in this world and have gone into the hands of the Lord of Life and Mercy for all eternity. We must make it clear too, that many who have sought to have practiced on themselves therapeutic abortion are in many instances driven to it by persons heedless of their welfare, or by well-meaning but inept parents or guardians who regard abortion as a solution and not as what it is — an immense problem. There are some, I think few, largely given over to immoral lives who regard abortion as a good, but their number is not great.
What we have to remember is that violence breeds violence. When we tolerate unjust attacks upon the tiniest innocents among us, we habituate ourselves to violence. And so we have allowed these barbaric practices to corrupt our laws, our medical practice, and even our ordinary lives. How accustomed we have become to the immense loss of life in our wars throughout the world! Those who have killed millions under their mother’s hearts cannot be expected to balk at a mere few thousand killed in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Somalia, in Darfur, in Bosnia, in Madrid, in London, in Baghdad, in Beirut, in Washington, in New York. The violence of abortion coarsens the lives of all of us.
Once it was said, “... for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52) So we see the rise in the number of predations among youth, even among the youngest, the rise of domestic violence. We speak of road rage as a common thing. It is true what the theologians have said, that sin darkens the intellect, and weakens the will.
Having sown the wind of abortion we now reap the whirlwind. This appears in every quarter of our culture and on every day. And that just from the first of the “sacraments of death” of our secular human culture.
The toleration of sexual perversions among inverts, widespread contraception, easy access to “no fault” divorce, the killing of the elderly, radical feminism, embryonic stem cell research — all of these things defile and debase our human nature and our human destiny. Should we cry out with the prophet “To the mountains, ‘Cover us,’ and to the hills, ‘Fall on us’” (Hosea: 10:8), lest other peoples see and, God forbid, imitate us?
I ran across, in one parish, prayers of the faithful with the intention that “we pray for those who work and demonstrate for the cause of life and the unborn, the aged and the defected, that they may persevere in spite of the ridicule they receive sometimes, even from pastors and priests.” I shudder to think that might be true. We know from the sad experience of recent years that some Catholics (even among priests) are so warped and perverted from their Catholic vocation, that they are capable of enormities. But, they should know that it was no prelate or bishop or pope that said, “Suffer the little children to come to me and do not hinder them” (Matthew 19:14). The Invisible Head of the Church will one day come to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire, particularly those who have either by acts of omission or commission, destroyed innocent human life.
It is the duty of every Catholic to support the work of the parish Pro-Life directors and commissions and to work for the extirpation from our society of all those who in any way foster or promote these things. I wholeheartedly endorse the activities of our Pro-Life Office in the sure and certain knowledge that divine justice will not allow those who act against human life to prosper.
These unholy sacraments of our secular culture are the seeds of the destruction of our nation.
Think for yourself: what nation that kills its young, perverts marriage, prevents new life, and destroys the family, kills those deemed useless, makes the war of the sexes into a real war, and manipulates the genetic basis of human nature, can long endure?
Ping
That's two prophetic public statements by princes of the Roman Catholic Church in America. Thank God for their witness!
Here's a thread I posted the other day that's actually about this editorial.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1684977/posts
See tagline
"Those who do not learn from history are forced to repeat it." .... Santayana
One need only look back on the decadence that proliferated in the Ancient Empires, like Rome or Greece, to see the future of our country. We're trekking down the same path. It's only a matter of time.
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"Think for yourself: what nation that kills its young, perverts marriage, prevents new life, and destroys the family, kills those deemed useless, makes the war of the sexes into a real war, and manipulates the genetic basis of human nature, can long endure?"
Bustard, you said the same thing, more economically, in your tagline! Good on ya!
Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.
Was just going to ping you to this!
I also believe the statement to be literally true. The greatest danger to the West is neither Communism nor Mohammedanism, but cultural suicide. This is not to minimise the external threat; it is simply to spotlight the greater internal threat. A critical mass of Westerners simply have lost confidence in our culture, are more interested in fleeting physical pleasure than in anything else, and have declined or refused to perpetuate it.
How often have we heard the rhetorical question: "who would want to bring children into this awful world?" ... as if it's somehow worse than any other time.
Don't you wish you had my Bishop Doran? Plenty of available real estate up here at reasonable prices!
Can't you share him with East Tennessee?
This is man is Pope material, imo!
Beloved Marmema, George, Doctor, Dark Lord... Unlike many of the endless "Let's Pray to this-or-that Saint today" Roman Catholic posts taking up space and bandwidth, I personally think that this Article should NOT get lost in the white noise of the Religion Forum.
I have often said before that Abortion is the sacrament of the Left... it is their partaking of the Body and the Blood, their Holy Eucharist (which is why they cannot tolerate even a Pro-Life Socialist like former Pennsylvania Democrat Governor Bob Casey -- no matter how Labor-Union/Marxist his "Catholic-liberation-theology" Economics, his opposition to Abortion threatened their Religion. This, they could not permit).
I am going to save this Article in my Bookmarks. I am also going to Request, just because I think it is important, that we would please ping this Article to every Orthodox and Calvinist Christian on the Forum: when the Roman Catholics actually get something right -- quite right, indeed -- let's be charitable, and applaud them for it.
Best, OP
I thought the Article particularly good for that reason.
We can rejoice in the words of the Gloria Patri that assures us of the Hope in Christ...
Glory be to the Father,
And to the Son,
And to the Holy Ghost,
As it was in the beginning, it now and ever shall be,
World[age???] without end,
Amen, Amen.
It should not be surprising that the great Calvinist Presbyterian theologian and Greek Scholar from Old Princeton,J. Gresham Machen detected this over 83 years ago when he penned the classic Christianity and Liberalism, which conclusively demonstrates that the liberalism (read secularism) of the age is not merely a political philosophy. Indeed, it was and is ANOTHER RELIGION.
We need be reminded that the one who worships at the secular altar, breaks the basic commandments of Thou shalt have no other gods before ME.
Apologies to our Roman Catholic associates, in that i wouldn't know who to ping to this comment, and am not as familiar as the Catholic Ping List as i am the GRPL. None of you were deliberately overlooked.
It is unfortunate that the article is getting lost in the blog shuffle. The original in the Observer no longer can be found. I just wrote to the Observer asking if they have an archive somewhere I cannot find it, and whether they have plans to create one.
The search for the magical number seven is I think a bit of a reaching (the sacraments of the Catholic Church are seven in number). According to the influential Karl Keating (most recently of of the Catholic Answers Action) there are five non-negotiable issues that a Catholic is not morally free to vote in support of:
How does the concept of a sacrament connect to the grave ills enumerated by the Bishop?
A sacrament is understood by the Church as an act that puts in effect a specific covenant with God. It makes use of a physical act and relates to the worship as sacrifice. For example, baptism is a sacrament where through contact with water a covenantal Christian life begins as pre-Christian life ends. I do not intend to argue whether this is good theology at this point, but merely want to point out the difference between the sacrament and any other type of ritualistic behavior.
From this perspective I think it is rather obvious that the crime of abortion or the sin of contraception are akin to satanic sacraments. Both are physical acts that exist objectively and not merely in the mind of the practitioner. Both are sacrificial in nature, and in both cases the findamental relationship with God as the author of life is severed. These are acts of anti-worship. Likewise, other sins that the good bishop mentions are effective acts of separation from God and hence bear a mark of a satanic sacrament.
Yes, you're right. That is an excellent point that I neglected.
Very atypical. I'm impressed! Of course he omitted evolution from his list of secular ills, but I'm still impressed!
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