Friday, February 17, 2012

*BEST OF DTB #138* The Catholic Defender: Birth Control and the Liberal

Because of the open warfare that Obama has made on Christianity, there has been a lot of talk about birth control in the news. How the liberal Democrats are staging a ruse against the Church claiming the issue is "Women's Health".

Nancy Pelosi and the liberal left are trying to hijack the debate so they can force their policy upon the Church.

Jennifer Bendery, writing for Huff Post Politics, today writes: "I think it's really curiouser and curiouser that as we get further into this debate, the Republican leadership of this Congress thinks it's appropriate to have a hearing on the subject of women's health and can purposely exclude women from the panel," Pelosi said during a press conference. "What else do you need to know about the subject?"

"If you need to know more, tune in, I may, I may at some point be moved to explain biology to my colleagues."

Pelosi's remarks came shortly after three House Democrats walked out of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on religious liberty and birth control in protest of Chairman Darrell Issa's (R-Calif.) refusal to allow a woman to testify in favor of the Obama administration's contraception rule. The morning panel at the hearing consisted exclusively of men from conservative religious organizations.

A second panel included two women, but both were critics of Obama's birth control mandate, which does not exempt religiously affiliated employers from having to include contraception in employees' insurance coverage. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) told reporters in the hallway outside the hearing that she marched out because it was being conducted like an "autocratic regime."

"Five men are testifying on women's health," Pelosi said. "Where are the women? Imagine having a panel on women's health and they don't have any women on the panel."

See how the Democrats are wanting to frame the debate? Today's hearing had nothing to do with women's health or birth control. It was about the Government's attack on religious freedom of conscience.

Jennifer Bendery does provide an update reporting, "Issa spokeswoman Becca Glover Watkins later criticized Pelosi for ignoring the fact that two women were scheduled to testify at the hearing.

"Rep. Pelosi is either ill informed or arrogantly dismissive of women who don’t share her views. Today’s hearing does in fact include two women, Dr. Allison Garrett of Oklahoma Christian University and Dr. Laura Champion of Calvin College Health Services," Watkins said.

From the Article "Issa to keep contraception fight going" by Steve Benen, he is also staging this debate with contraception being the central issue. It appears this is the Democrat's strategy to defend Obama?

Steve Benen quote the hearing saying, "Republican Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, will convene a hearing [Thursday], "Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State. Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?".

Check how Benen gives his two cents on todays happening: "The lead witness is the Most Rev. William E. Lori, Roman Catholic bishop of Bridgeport, Conn., and chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty. Judging from Lori and the rest of the witness list, it's obvious that Issa has posed what he considers to be a rhetorical question and lined up nine like-minded rhetoricians to answer it anyway."

The hearing was specifically looking at the question of Separation of Church and State. I find it ironic that if Christians speak out on moral issues in public, we are hit erroneously with the question of Separation of Church and State. However, if the Obama Administration believe they can force Christians to bend the knee to him, they do not recognize their infringement. The issue is not womens rights to use Birth Control. The access is everywhere. To force Christians to pay for abortions and birth control against their conscience is a clear infringement against the Constitution of the United States.

Amendment 1 states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Clearly, the framers of the Constitution says that the Government cannot interfere with the freedom of religion and the practice thereof.

One of the Democrat's talking points is their claiming 98% of Catholic women use Artificial Birth Control as to say that the Church has no right to prevent them from using Birth Control. This is the real issue, the promotion of Abortion, Homosexuality, Divorce and remarriage, and many other points of interest, the Progressives seek to destroy traditional values.

I want to take a closer look at what their claim is. How many women are there living in the United States? Roughly, there are about 155.6 million women in the United States.

Of this number, 78 million females are between 45 and 65 years old. There are about 30 million females between 12 and 25 years of age.

This is the group that Planned Parenthood seeks to cater too. To say that 98% of women use Artificial Birth Control is totally misleading.

78 million women are past the child bearing age and would use Artificial Birth Control very rarely. If you count females from birth to age 12, that would be a very low percentage using contraception.

It might be that the extreme Progressive would seek to lower the age of consent of children, certainly they would want to prepare them for the sex culture very early on.

If you asked the question to Catholics, how many of you have used Artificial Birth Control at some point during their life, that might be a very high number. But for the 78 million no longer using Artificial Birth Control, how many of the Catholics have gone to confession and repented of this practice because of the pressure of our culture?

How many of them would support the Government mandating the Church to break with the Apostolic Tradition? The following is an article written by Michael Brendan Dougherty and Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry entitles, "Time To Admit It: The Church Has Always Been Right On Birth Control"

Painting the Catholic Church as "out of touch" is like shooting fish in a barrel, what with the funny hats and gilded churches. And nothing makes it easier than the Church's stance against contraception.

Many people, (including our editor) are wondering why the Catholic Church doesn't just ditch this requirement. They note that most Catholics ignore it, and that most everyone else finds it divisive, or "out-dated." C'mon! It's the 21st century, they say! Don't they SEE that it's STUPID, they scream.

Here's the thing, though: the Catholic Church is the world's biggest and oldest organization. It has buried all of the greatest empires known to man, from the Romans to the Soviets. It has establishments literally all over the world, touching every area of human endeavor. It's given us some of the world's greatest thinkers, from Saint Augustine on down to René Girard. When it does things, it usually has a good reason. Everyone has a right to disagree, but it's not that they're a bunch of crazy old white dudes who are stuck in the Middle Ages.

So, what's going on?

The Church teaches that love, marriage, sex, and procreation are all things that belong together. That's it. But it's pretty important. And though the Church has been teaching this for 2,000 years, it's probably never been as salient as today.

Today's injunctions against birth control were re-affirmed in a 1968 document by Pope Paul VI called Humanae Vitae. He warned of four results if the widespread use of contraceptives was accepted:

1.General lowering of moral standards
2.A rise in infidelity, and illegitimacy
3.The reduction of women to objects used to satisfy men.
4.Government coercion in reproductive matters.

Does that sound familiar?

Because it sure sounds like what's been happening for the past 40 years.

By making the birth of the child the physical choice of the mother, the sexual revolution has made marriage and child support a social choice of the father.

Instead of two parents being responsible for the children they conceive, an expectation that was held up by social norms and by the law, we now take it for granted that neither parent is necessarily responsible for their children. Men are now considered to be fulfilling their duties merely by paying court-ordered child-support. That's a pretty dramatic lowering of standards for "fatherhood."

Kim Kardashian's marriage lasted 72 days. Illegitimacy: way up. In 1960, 5.3% of all births in America were to unmarried women. By 2010, it was 40.8%. In 1960 married families made up almost three-quarters of all households; but by the census of 2010 they accounted for just 48 percent of them. Cohabitation has increased tenfold since 1960.

And if you don't think women are being reduced to objects to satisfy men, welcome to the internet, how long have you been here? Government coercion: just look to China (or America, where a government rule on contraception coverage is the reason why we're talking about this right now).

Is this all due to the Pill? Of course not. But the idea that widely-available contraception hasn't led to dramatic societal change, or that this change has been exclusively to the good, is a much sillier notion than anything the Catholic Church teaches.

So is the notion that it's just OBVIOUSLY SILLY to get your moral cues from a venerable faith (as opposed to what? Britney Spears?).

But let's turn to another aspect of this. The reason our editor thinks Catholics shouldn't be fruitful and multiply doesn't hold up, either. The world's population, he writes, is on an "unsustainable" growth path.

The Population Bureau of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations sees the rate of population growth slowing over the next decades and stabilizing around 9 billion in 2050…and holding there until 2300. (And note that the UN, which promotes birth control and abortions around the world, isn't exactly in the be-fruitful-and-multiply camp.)

More broadly, the Malthusian view of population growth has been resilient despite having been proven wrong time and time again and causing lots of unnecessary human suffering. For example, China is headed for a demographic crunch and social dislocation due to its misguided one-child policy.

Human progress is people. Everything that makes life better, from democracy to the economy to the internet to penicillin was either discovered and built by people. More people means more progress. The inventor of the cure for cancer might be someone's fourth child that they decided not to have.

So, just to sum up:
•It's a good idea for people to be fruitful and multiply; and
•Regardless of how you feel about the Church's stance on birth control, it's proven pretty prophetic."


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