What is really required … is to address the thought processes
and motivations that prompt people to seek abortion as a solution to a
personal problem that should not have occurred in the first place
Catholics, and our counterparts in other religions, are making
headway in the struggle against abortion. Women coming to clinics
seeking abortion have often been convinced to turn around and plan to
give birth to the baby. Legislatures in many states have thrown up
roadblocks by introducing requirements such as time delays, requiring
parental consent, or requiring a woman to view a sonogram of the
developing baby before going ahead with a planned abortion. Court
action has often been taken in cases of underage girls being coached on
how to falsify their story and in cases where girls have been
transported across state lines to locations where abortion was legal. A
few states have even denied funding to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s
largest abortion provider. And, through C-FAM, we have been fighting
the abortion agenda in the halls of the United Nations.
The publicity front in the abortion war has also been moving ahead,
with a concentration on young women and on ethnic groups that have
statistically higher rates of abortion. Pro-life inserts are placed in
college newspapers, presentations of photos showing the true nature of
abortion are given on college campuses, a film has been produced
referring to abortion as black genocide, and a campaign is under way to
introduce pro-life literature into barber shops in minority
neighborhoods.
The success of the overall effort can be realized from the fact that
the numbers of abortion clinics and abortion providers have been sharply
reduced, especially in rural areas.
But the effort thus far has been aimed at preventing the act of
abortion itself or reducing the numbers of abortions performed. What is
really required, however, is to address the thought processes and
motivations that prompt people to seek abortion as a solution to a
personal problem that should not have occurred in the first place.
The first of these attitudes and motivations is the widespread
acceptance, and widespread practice, of contraception, even among
Catholics. When the Obama administration targeted Catholics and used a
mandate to force many Catholic institutions to fund contraception for
all their employees, the Catholic bishops responded on the freedom of
religion aspect of the issue, but contraception is itself a major moral
problem to which the Church has not been giving proper attention for
several decades.
People develop a mistaken idea that contraception prevents pregnancy
100 percent of the time, and when an unforeseen pregnancy does occur,
they are tempted to resort to abortion. The Guttmacher Institute
reported in 2009 that 54 percent of abortions were performed on women
who had used contraceptives in the month before they became pregnant.
The United States Supreme Court in 1992 (Casey v. Planned Parenthood),
based a judgment against allowing obstacles to abortion on the very
fact that people rely on abortion when contraception fails.
There is an abundance of evidence as to why contraception is morally
wrong, beginning with God’s striking Onan dead for using it (Gen 38:9-10), continuing through the earliest Church tradition (the Didache), and the writings of numerous Church Fathers and Popes, right up to Vatican Council II (Gaudium et Spes 48, 50).
In addition to the moral arguments are the harmful natural effects –
the increase in adultery due to the lessening of the fear of pregnancy;
the resulting increase in divorce, leading to an increase in the number
of women forced to be single mothers living in poverty; and, associated
problems of their children receiving poorer education, making them
vulnerable to incentives toward delinquency and crime; the decline in
men’s respect for women; and the tendency of governments to institute
population control measures, including forced abortions. Besides these
sociological effects, there are still others – the fact that
contraceptives do not prevent the transmission of venereal disease, the
damage to reproductive systems from water supplies that contain runoff
from the urine of women using the pill, and the damage to Social
Security and Medicare because fewer young people are entering the work
force, resulting in the fact that contributions are insufficient to
match the outlays to retirees.
But the objective of the Catholic Church goes beyond preventing a
host of worldly problems. The reason for the Church’s existence is to
help people to gain heaven, but contraception prevents children from
even existing. Couples who seek the pleasure of sex, without its natural
consequences, are acting in a way that’s directly opposed to their
achieving salvation.
The most direct result of using contraception is the fact that it
violates the very purpose of sexuality. When one wants to find the
purpose of anything, it is necessary to consider what it does that
nothing else does. In the case of sexuality, it’s procreation. Nothing
else in nature accomplishes that. Using this God-given faculty in a
way that deliberately frustrates its God-intended result is a direct
offense against the Creator, who wishes the couple to accept this new
human being, and to raise this child in a way that will lead all three
of them to life with God. So, life-long monogamous marriage is the
proper and necessary environment for the exercise of sexuality.
Natural Family Planning (NFP) is not the universal solution. In the
very encyclical in which he proclaimed that contraception is immoral,
Pope Paul VI also declared that NFP is allowable only under certain
conditions – medical, psychological or financial – that make it
permissible for a married couple to restrict their marital acts to times
when procreation is not likely to occur (Humanae Vitae 16 and 10).
While today’s financial environment could mean that more couples
qualify now than forty years ago, Pope Paul made it very clear that NFP
is not a universal solution for everyone.
But while procreation is the very purpose of sexuality, then the
concept of recreational sex, so widely accepted today, is a fundamental
component of the attitudes and beliefs that lead to abortion. When a
person is open to the idea that sex is primarily recreational, they seek
to explore it, at first vicariously, by means of pornography, and then
with actual, contracepting partners, either in one-night stands, or in
an ongoing arrangement of cohabitation. Very often, it leads to
abortion.
Contraception, with its underlying concept of recreational sex, has
also led to the movement on the part of homosexual people to have their
lifestyle, and their relationships accepted, and even considered to be
marriage. After all, if heterosexual people can enjoy the pleasure of
sex while preventing the birth of children, then it’s difficult to
justify the belief that people who cannot have children should be
forbidden to have sex. But our willingness to accept people with
same-sex attraction as human beings, and as God’s children, does not
mean that one should condone actions that God himself punished with fire
and brimstone at Sodom and Gomorrah.
So, we see that abortion, horrible as it is, is just the tip of the
iceberg that consists of a series of evils, threatening the salvation of
everyone in today’s world. The notion of recreational sex is a major
part of the problem. So, how must we conduct this part of the fight?
Obviously, we have to publicize arguments regarding the purpose of
sexuality, plus the nature and the purpose of marriage. We must add to
this the reasons why contraception is wrong, both the harmful natural
effects that apply to everyone, including secularists, and also the
evidence from Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition that applies to
Catholics and to other Christians. Parishes need to insure that these
are dealt with properly in pre-Cana meetings, in adult education, in
training for parents of children and of teen-agers, and in RCIA classes.
Instructors in Catholic schools, and in CCD classes, must be properly
trained. Catholic high schools and colleges must also ensure proper
proclamation of the message.
These must be accompanied by strong opposition to pornography,
insisting on proper enforcement of laws that are in effect, plus seeking
more restrictions on the distribution of prurient material through the
Internet, on television, in magazines, and other media outlets.
But dissemination of the message is the easy part. It will be more
difficult to gain acceptance of the message, given that people have
become accustomed to a lifestyle built around the concept of
recreational sex. The Church has been silent too long regarding the
expression of that lifestyle through contraception.
Just as there were a series of issues underlying abortion, there is
another series of issues involved in convincing people what they need to
do, for their own salvation, and to overcome the evils throughout
society.
The first obstacle that needs to be addressed is the loss of respect
for the authority of the Church. Catholics need to be reminded that
Christ’s words to Peter included: “I will give you the keys to the
kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew
16:19). This authority given to Peter and his successors involves
morality as well as doctrine.
Many baptized Catholics intellectually accept the Church’s right to
promulgate the moral law but do not act according to what they have been
taught. They rationalize it, finding ways to justify acting as they
want, rather than as they ought. Rationalization involves a misuse of
conscience. These people must, therefore, be led to a proper
understanding of conscience as a matter of discerning through the
intellect, and not a matter of deciding for themselves through the will,
influenced by feelings.
But for other baptized Catholics, who do not accept Church authority,
the obstacle is a failure of faith, as people question the right of God
himself to direct their activity, having been led by a secular world to
think of themselves as subject to no one, with an unlimited right to do
as they want. They need to be brought to realize their own
limitations, that they did not bring themselves into this world, and
that their existence and their well-being depend on others. They need
also to recognize Christ as divine, possessing the nature and authority
of God, who came into our world to redeem it, and to point out for us
the way to eternal life with him by leading an earthy life based on his
teachings.
Apologetics, giving the reasons for the truths the Church teaches, is
a necessary first step. It is necessary for presenting the evidence for
Christ’s divinity, and it is necessary also for showing that the
Catholic Church is the instrument for proclaiming his message, thus
showing people the reasonableness of faith. From there, one can go on
to show that the Catholic Church is the one founded by Christ; that the
moral law is essentially the road map to salvation; and how to make the
proper use of conscience. All Catholics, but especially parents and
teachers, should be trained in the essentials of apologetics. But
apologetics, necessary as it is, must be accompanied by prayer, and a
spirit of sacrifice, on the part of those who already believe, all for
the sake of conversion of others, that they may be led to realize these
truths.
It’s a campaign that needs to be waged on many fronts
simultaneously. The essential theme that needs to permeate the entire
effort is love that includes forgiveness. Christ came into our world
out of love for us, precisely to redeem every member of the human race
by means of the sacrificial offering of himself on Calvary. His action
there included a prayer that his persecutors might be forgiven, and his
promise of Paradise for the repentant thief. Then, at his first meeting
with the eleven remaining apostles, he even gave them the authority to
forgive sins against him.
Besides making our salvation possible by his suffering and death,
Christ also told us how to achieve salvation, telling us that we must
live out the Ten Commandments internally, as well as externally. He gave
us the Beatitudes, and the instruction of more than a score of
parables. Christ went even further, by giving us the means of gaining
salvation, through the sacraments. Three of these are especially
relevant in combating abortion.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation re-unites the repentant sinner with
Christ and his Church. For one who is truly sorry for offending God,
resolved to avoid further sinful acts, thoughts and words, and willing
to make restitution for damage done to others, the sincere and complete
confession of the sins can bring total forgiveness for multiple
abortions, for decades of contraceptive acts, and indulgence in
pornography, as well as for other sins they have committed. A loving
Christ is, thus, applying to an individual the fruits of his sacrifice
on Calvary.
But sexual abuses, especially pornography and contraception,
frequently become addictions, difficult to overcome, so a person needs
special help to fight their way back to a moral way of life. The
Sacrament of Holy Eucharist provides that help. A loving Christ comes
personally to the individual, and he himself is the special food that
builds up spiritual strength for the struggle against the temptations
that inevitably will return. Frequent reception of Holy Eucharist, even
daily if possible, together with quick returns to the Sacrament of
Reconciliation, if lapses should occur, can help the person to overcome
eventually their long-standing inclinations and weakness.
But there is yet another sacrament that is especially relevant to the
struggle against abortion, and that is the Sacrament of Matrimony. One
of the promises the couple makes at the marriage ceremony is to accept
all the children God may send them. A person normally receives this
sacrament only once, in contrast to Reconciliation and Holy Eucharist
which should be received frequently. But the effects of marriage are
constantly renewed throughout life in order to assist the couple in the
day-to-day effort to live out their vocation to love each other, and to
love the children God sends them, in a way that will bring all of them
to be with him. Given the realities of human nature, and the fact that
we frequently offend others, the act of forgiveness—which we often need
to request, as well as to extend—is a necessary feature of a healthy
married life.
We began this discussion by trying to find the means to attack
abortion at its roots, and what we have arrived at is a Catholic way of
life, and the day-by-day effort of married persons to live that life.
And that’s exactly the point. When one is truly convinced that sex is
not for pleasure, but for children; and that marriage is a vocation for
bringing up children, one is much better able to resist the lures of
pornography and of contraception. Those who do not practice
contraception, are far less likely to seek abortion. Even if chemical
abortions are increasing to fill the gap left by the decline in surgical
abortions, the same arguments apply.
The Catholic concept of marriage—involving the commitment of one’s
very life to serve God in the small community of husband and wife,
pledging their mutual love exclusively until death, and sharing their
love with the children their love brings about—is an ideal way of life
that others do not possess, but which they would really want to have if
they can be brought to recognize its value. It must be presented to
them in a way that leads them to that recognition. This way of life is
based on faith in God and his Son, Jesus Christ. It is recognizing the
love he has shown to us. It is appreciating the Church he has given us.
It is thankful obedience to the rules pointed out by his Church. And, it
is the willingness to direct one’s life according to his will for us,
so that we may eventually experience the eternal happiness he holds out
for us.
It is a matter of carrying out the fundamentals of Catholic life in a
humble, prayerful way, driven by a lively faith that expresses itself
in love, and then evangelizing others from that point of view.
