Here Comes the Catholic Church

I really enjoyed this video from Father John Hollowell from the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.  It is his response to the Planned Parenthood video from Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood.

There are many arguments to why employers should not be forced to pay for contraceptive services for their employees.  Simply, why would I want those chemicals in my wife and daughters?  Why would I want to interfere with God's plan for us?  Who am I to tell God that He, the Creator of the Universe, does not know what He intended for us?

If you cut away the spite, the lies, the hatred, and find what is true, good, and beautiful, it is not hard to see that God's plan should always be our plan.

But back to the video from Father Hollowell:

I really like the part at the end- before the music, when he quotes JRR Tolkien- The board is set, the pieces are now in motion.  At last we come to it, the great battle of our age. I truly believe this to be the forefront to the great battle of our age.  As you know, our freedoms are being challenged daily.  The government tells us to violate our conscience in the name of "preventative health care" for women.  Recently, I saw a news piece where universities and employers are demanding access to current and prospective students and employees Facebook accounts- they are asking for and expecting usernames and passwords, or expecting to "look over your shoulder" while you log in and they scroll through your wall.  I can't even imagine what next could look like, but I am sure we will see it soon.

If you are interested further in the Father Hollowell's blog site click here.

This Isn’t Really About Contraception, is it Mr. President?

On January 20, 2012, the Health and Human Services agency, led by former-governor Kathleen Sebelius, presented a rule that would require most employers to provide contraceptive services and products to their employees at with no copay requirements. The exemptions to this rule are so slim that it is speculated that even Jesus Christ and His Apostles may not have qualified for the religious exemption, because He chose to serve those that may not have been members of his specific religion.

The ensuing uproar caught the President off guard it is said. Others say the President knew exactly what he was doing. Did he really expect that virtually every Roman Catholic Bishop in the United States would rise up against this evil regulation? Did he expect the Bishop of Phoenix to tell his flock “We cannot- will not- comply with this unjust law”?

Did he expect that other Bishops and priests would start praying the St. Michael the Archangel prayer at the end of Mass?

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle! Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, oh Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, cast into Hell, Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the earth, seeking the ruin of souls, Amen.

I seriously doubt that the President expected he would lose the support of his toadies who proclaim themselves Catholic, yet openly discount the teachings of the Church as wrong, or not applicable to them. At least for the moment, anyway.

Never fear! Compromise is here! On February 10th, the President held a brief press conference, where he told the country that he would accommodate religious freedom while making sure that women have access to preventative health care, including contraception, at no additional cost, no matter where they work. Instead the insurance company will be required to directly offer the woman contraceptive care at no additional charge. He goes on to say that even if a woman’s employer is a charity or hospital that has not a religious objection to providing contraceptive services as part of their health plan, the insurance company, not the hospital or charity, will be required to reach out and offer the contraceptive care free of charge without copays and without hassles.

Let me break here for a moment- at no point do I think that contraceptive or abortive or sterilization services should be provided. I do not think it is a personal choice, I think it is inherently and intrinsically evil. The end does not justify the means.

As a businessman and insurance professional, I can tell you, nothing is free. Every item of coverage is calculated at some point. On the non-insurance side, let’s look at mobile telephones. At some point most carriers offer one or more of their handsets for free (subject to signing a two-year contract. How free is that?) This does not mean I can walk into the local Sprint store and ask for two or three of their free phones, unless of course I am prepared to commit to and pay for their service. Likewise, in the case of where the President is mandating that insurance companies pay for services that they do not “charge” for, at some point, you can sure believe a cost is calculated. Someone pays for that. You guessed it. The employer, the employee at some level (most employers do not provide free healthcare to their employees, even hospitals), and guess what? You the consumer end up paying for those services as well when you buy the employers products.

Well, after the President’s statement on 10 February, most of the Presidents toadies fell right back into the fold, saying that this compromise was great, and awesome and wonderful, and oh, never mind, it just made me sick. Later in the day, the USCCB issued a statement condemning the “compromise” calling it no compromise at all.

The President calls the rule “cost neutral” since it saves money by keeping women healthy. Pregnancy is not a disease! Has it been forgotten that chemical contraception causes cancer? Has it been forgotten that chemical contraceptives are abortifacient? What happens when the chemicals cause a miscarriage and results in excessive hemorrhaging, frequently resulting in hospitalization?



As I say at the beginning, this is not about contraception, is it? Fundamentally, what we must realize is this an attack upon the religious liberties granted us by the First Amendment of the Constitution. It is an attack upon our freedom of speech as well. These are core tenets of the fabric of our nation, and with the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen, we are seeing them taken from us not by legislation, but by regulation. The fact that this rule is has been given until August of next year to be implemented further suppresses our right to free speech and religious liberty by attempting to not make it a “political” issue.

I never thought I would find myself in agreement with Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles, who is well-known for his liberal stance on a number of issues. To say I was thunderstruck when I read his February 11, 2012 blog post entitled "Just a Minute, Mr. President!" would be an understatement. His statement says exactly what the problem is, and what is the greatest outrage:

As a Catholic American, I am outraged not only by your incredulous contortions to justify your untenable position, I am insulted that you would think that Americans who value and treasure our Constitutional freedoms would even question your overreaching infringement on individual freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.Your "accommodation" actually makes the entire matter far worse. Every effort must be undertaken to reverse your ill-conceived revocation of our Constitutional rights

So Mr. President, while I appreciate that you would like for us to believe that you are looking out for the women of our nation, I believe you have shown us your true colors, and that what you most ardently desire is a nation formed in your image, and for your newly minted ruling class to be the arbiters of what amounts to conscience and morals. I realize that you are not the morally relativistic man I thought you once to be, but find your moral compass pointed in a direction I cannot accept. Your path to morality threatens the existence of our nation and of our people. You perpetuate a Culture of Death, and whether you wish to acknowledge it or not, formally cooperate with evil when you support the notion that a child in the womb has no rights, making it perfectly okay, by your standard, to end that life with no sense of remorse that a human life has been lost. How many future Presidents have died because of this? How many chances for the cure to cancer have been lost for the sake of convenience?

No Mr. President, this is not about contraception, it is about LIFE! It is about freedom, seeking to do the will of God because it is good, not doing what you want because it feels good. And you cannot tell me that you support good morals in private, yet assert the right to make poor decisions in public. One day, you will be called accountable for your actions, and I pray that mercy is had upon you on that day.

Suffering in Marriage

There are few that would argue there is a certain amount of suffering attributed to being in a Christian marriage, though it could be argued that in the last half of the twentieth century it has gained a new significance, as society seeks to reduce the role of suffering within marriage. The assault upon marriage from secular society, and attempts to change the original intent of marriage further attack God’s plan for Man, another consequence of The Fall. Suffering takes on a new role when it speaks of original experience and its relationship to original solitude. Suffering aids us in the recovery of our original vocation, and contraception not only impedes that recovery, but actually increases suffering in opposition to God’s salvific plan. Not only does contraception work in opposition to God’s plan, but prevents the sort of suffering intended to allow us to rejoin Him in Heaven.

Father Jose Granados tells us, “Suffering is a language of the body that speaks of original solitude and original unity in one breath.” This language reveals itself most fully in the example set in the life of Christ, who gave fully of Himself in many situations, most vividly in His Passion and Death upon the Cross. Through Christ’s suffering, we are given first an example of how to live, how to approach life, and to ultimately be prepared to give that life up for another, as He gave His life for all. In this example we can then find new meaning for what love truly is, more than just a feeling, a high that cannot hope to be sustained. Love is in fact an act of the will, a total self-sacrifice that holds nothing back. In this total love, this complete sacrifice, we find our place in God’s plan, which is to know, love and serve God in this life. In the Genesis accounts of Creation, God creates Man in one act, “male and female, He created them,” (Gen 1:27). Only in Gen 2 does Scripture speak of Adam first, and then Eve being created from the rib of Adam, lending chronology to the sequence, not stating that woman was afterthought of God, but conceived in the mind of God from the beginning.

But how does this help us recover our original vocation? What then, is our original vocation? The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us in paragraph 1699 that Life in the Spirit fulfills the vocation of man. Further, CCC1700 we are again reminded that we are created in the image and likeness of God, and fulfilled in the vocation of divine beatitude. It goes on to assert that this is all left to Man’s own personal decisions, that is, ultimately freewill is given to us that we can choose a life of grace, or a life separated from God. But it is not presupposed that it is our actions alone that determine this, but instead depend upon the grace and mercy of a loving Father in heaven, who wishes nothing more than for His children to return to Him forever.

Simply put then, our original vocation is our call to holiness. In our suffering, in our self-sacrifice, in the giving of all that we have and all that we are, we find the love that Christ has for us, just as He has for His Father in Heaven. In His self-giving love, His total gift of self, we find the one example of the beatific vision that we should all strive for in all that we are. Our suffering, in union with Christ’s suffering on the cross of Calvary, is our path to the recovery of holiness.

If one has an understanding of how suffering relates to original solitude, and how it is fully connected to the recovery of holiness, then certainly there is no question that contraception not only stands in the way of that recovery, but prevents, and seeks to further destroy our call to holiness and unity. If Christ is our example of salvific suffering, then contraception by nature of its existence impedes and nullifies the sacrifice made by Him on the Cross of Calvary.

Contraception interferes with the Trinitarian concept of living giving and sustenance and attempts to take God out of the equation. We learn in catechism classes that the loving act of God the Father loving God the Son, and the Son receiving that love and then fully loving the Father is so fruitful that it generates God the Spirit, who flows fully from both. In this way, the marriage act mirrors the Trinity. That is, the man and the woman fully love each other, giving and receiving, and the product of the love often is a child, or many children. When Man takes matters into his own hands, he takes God out of the equation, and The Fall is recreated. When that cycle is broken, the consequences are frequently detrimental to all involved.

Contraception reduces the dignity of the man and the woman by reducing each other to objects to be used and discarded when they are no longer suitable for the purpose desired. When a person no longer views the other as anything other than a disposable object, the result is what Pope Paul VI spoke of after the introduction of Humanae Vitae in 1968, that is, an increase in abortion, which to date has taken in excess of 50 million lives in the United States alone. This is in addition to the assault on marriage, the huge numbers of children born out of wedlock, and the exponential increase in marriage. In fact, one need not look far to find one or several families that have children born out of wedlock, or suffer the effects of civil divorce.

In the introduction of contraception, the freedoms promised by it are only thinly veiled illusions of slavery. One would do well to recall that freedom is the not the right to make whatever choices one desires, but rather is the decision to do what is right. If a woman can never say no, but feels compelled to always say yes, then is she truly free? If a man feels like he must always be “on”, then how can he achieve self-mastery?

It could be argued that contraception gives persons the freedom to what they will with their bodies, to control, regulate, or even prevent the production of children. We have seen that this can certainly occurs, but at the consequence of divorce, abuse, abortion, and the unwarranted suffering of children in irregular family situations. God intended for children to be raised by their fathers and their mothers, and when we diminish one’s personhood, we deviate from God’s plan. This results in a loss of heaven, which we know to be Hell.

Contraception also prevents appropriate suffering, the act of loving self-sacrifice exemplified by Our Lord in His Life, Death, and Resurrection. If we removed the term contraception, which means against life, and replaced it with conception, which means for life, we would see a dramatic increase of self-sacrifice, total gift of self that is faithful, fruitful and total. If each spouse would live a life of self-gift to one another and their children, contraception would be eliminated because of disuse.

The role of suffering within marriage can best be realized by looking to the example of the Life, Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ Jesus. In exploring the mysteries of Christ, we learn more of ourselves as we learn more about God, who shows Himself to love us as completely as He loves His Son. When we seek to fully reflect the Trinity, we find our original vocation, through life in the Spirit. In this life, through the grace and mercy of our Heavenly Father, we find our paths to holiness. We know contraception to be inherently evil, and causes suffering contrary to God’s salvific plan. The freedoms it promises are smokescreen which impedes the suffering that we are intended to endure to join God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit in Heaven at the end of our days.