The Secret Teaching of the Catholic Church

Or not so secret. Evangelium Vitae has been on the Internet for 20 years- one of the first group of Vatican Encyclicals put out on the then-new world wide web. But it seems most American Catholics have never read it, making the Bishops current battle against the Obama Administration over mandated family planning seem out of touch.

For those wondering why all the hoopla about Family Planning now, I quote EV Section 13:

13. In order to facilitate the spread of abortion, enormous sums of money have been invested and continue to be invested in the production of pharmaceutical products which make it possible to kill the fetus in the mother's womb without recourse to medical assistance. On this point, scientific research itself seems to be almost exclusively preoccupied with developing products which are ever more simple and effective in suppressing life and which at the same time are capable of removing abortion from any kind of control or social responsibility.

It is frequently asserted that contraception, if made safe and available to all, is the most effective remedy against abortion. The Catholic Church is then accused of actually promoting abortion, because she obstinately continues to teach the moral unlawfulness of contraception. When looked at carefully, this objection is clearly unfounded. It may be that many people use contraception with a view to excluding the subsequent temptation of abortion. But the negative values inherent in the "contraceptive mentality"-which is very different from responsible parenthood, lived in respect for the full truth of the conjugal act-are such that they in fact strengthen this temptation when an unwanted life is conceived. Indeed, the pro- abortion culture is especially strong precisely where the Church's teaching on contraception is rejected. Certainly, from the moral point of view contraception and abortion arespecifically different evils: the former contradicts the full truth of the sexual act as the proper expression of conjugal love, while the latter destroys the life of a human being; the former is opposed to the virtue of chastity in marriage, the latter is opposed to the virtue of justice and directly violates the divine commandment "You shall not kill".

But despite their differences of nature and moral gravity, contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree. It is true that in many cases contraception and even abortion are practised under the pressure of real- life difficulties, which nonetheless can never exonerate from striving to observe God's law fully. Still, in very many other instances such practices are rooted in a hedonistic mentality unwilling to accept responsibility in matters of sexuality, and they imply a self-centered concept of freedom, which regards procreation as an obstacle to personal fulfilment. The life which could result from a sexual encounter thus becomes an enemy to be avoided at all costs, and abortion becomes the only possible decisive response to failed contraception.

The close connection which exists, in mentality, between the practice of contraception and that of abortion is becoming increasingly obvious. It is being demonstrated in an alarming way by the development of chemical products, intrauterine devices and vaccines which, distributed with the same ease as contraceptives, really act as abortifacients in the very early stages of the development of the life of the new human being.

The dear departed Blessed Pope John Paul The Great *does* have a point here. According to the February 2005 issue of Consumer Reports, in typical usage condoms fail 15% of the time. Birth control pills fail 8% of the time. This is contrasted with "perfect" usage in which the error rates fall to 2% and 1% respectively. But when you consider that most birth control failures result in an abortion- would we accept a car that 8 out of 100 trips crashes and kills the children of it's operator? I would also point out that there are several drugs out there that we now know cause MALE contraception, but because these drugs also cause "erectile dysfunction" (what better form of birth control is there than NOT being able to complete standard sexual intercourse?) they are not marketed as such, and Planned Parenthood will never give a prescription for Cymbalta because they don't believe a lower libido can be effective birth control- either that or because it's so effective they wouldn't get any more abortion business.