The twin idols of greed and lust are great cooperators in the degradation of humanity.

We are mistaken if we don’t understand that the primary reason for the legalization of contraception and abortion in this country is that they are good for business.

I think you’ve got it exactly right, in spite of yourself, ben: the people of a nation steeped in centuries of heresy are, indeed, “so coldly indifferent to the face of God in their fellow human beings.”

You see this most readily in the condoning of abortion by that society; I see it most readily in the promotion of “unjust wars” and “legalized” “capital” murder and the brutal exploitation of the poor by “globalist” economic theory, but both are really different aspects of the same thing–the readiness of the subjects of a perverted theology to “commodify life.”

It is very, very important–and perhaps the biggest challenge facing the modern Catholic Church–to persuade the remnants of Christendom that these issues are fundamentally CONNECTED, and that, if we don’t recognise that connection–and soon–we are all going to become implicated in a radical de-sanctification and re-enslavement of humanity that’ll make Nazidom look like a picnic. And I AM talking about a “brave new world” that would include such things as the genetic fabrication of an enslaved category of humans, about the “cleansing” away of genetic traits such as homosexuality and non-lucrative talent, about material inducement to families to promote the euthanizing of their elders, etc. etc.–the “commodification” of every single life form on this planet.

Once my own brother, a capitalist mogul of the pesticide industry told me, when I objected to the callous blood-sucking marketing ploys of his multinational’s subsidiary in Sri Lanka (mostly involving failure to print warnings on pesticide labels in any language but English, leading to farmers’ premature deaths and mid-life crippling, after a decade or two of spraying, without masks, what they did not know was poisonous if inhaled, onto their paddy fields), saying to him, “Well, bro, there ARE people in this country who are working on natural pesticides–natural fungi and insect life, which can replace your dangerous chemicals.”

Let me tell you what his response to me was. (It was similar, from a moral perspective, to that of the priests who will fulminate against “embryonic stem cell research” but not against the so-medically-lucrative artifical insemination that MAKES the zygotes for the stem cell research.) He said: “Do you think that my firm, which is the second or third largest chemical pesticide conglomerate on earth, isn’t already spending millions on the very research you’re speaking of? And don’t you think that when these people are ready for such technology, that we WILL SELL THEM BACK THEIR OWN FUNGI AND INSECTS–genetically modified, of course–AS OUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY?”

Tell me that such an attitude of brutal, amoral capitalist exploitation of the poor, of the earth and of the earth’s natural resources–an example, if ever there was one, of what Marx called the “transvaluation of all values” by the “modernizing” force of capitalism–isn’t directly related, in the spiritual dimension, to the abortion of human foetuses.

But THAT is the argument that we HAVE to make, in order to at least be witnesses to the truths of the Gospels, at what may be the end of Christian civilisation.

What could be causing this fear? Nearly 50,000,000 of our fellow countrymen have dies as a result of abortion.

Why are they so afraid? They are afraid that their neighbor, thier son or daughter of their grandson or niece or nephew could be the next to die.

What’s behind all of this that we need to address so that we can continue to treat these people like the human beings that they are? We need to address as a society the reality of the millions who have died, we need to be allowed to publicly acknowldge their deaths, we need to mourn them, and we need to take difinitive action to stop the killing so that the face of God is seen in the unborn person.

And, if they are Christians as many of them claim to be, what do we need to do in order to help them see that “perfect love has already cast out THE fear?” We need to act like the unborn are worthy of love and created in the image of God.

I’ve often wanted to ask the woman with the huge cross around her neck scolding the US Senator why she feels a need to be so angry? Maybe she had grandchildren killed by an abortionist, had you considered that?

What has hurt her so deeply that she must lash out at her fellow human being made in the image of God? Mass murder, maybe even of people she loves dearly who are her close relatives anddear family members demands a response. When civil authorities fail to act in defese of her loved ones she has bee sinned against. Anger is a justified response. Jesus turned the tables in the temple and he whipped the money changers, even though they were created in the image of God.

I also want to know why the election of a black President has caused her faith to crack into millions of tiny pieces? I wouldn’t suppose that Obama had creacked her faith into a million pieces, but perhaps he has cracked her faith in her country into a million pieces.

I think you will see over the next several years an increase in the number of conspiracy theories coming from the right. This is precisely because they really do love their neighbors. We do not want to believe that our neighbors ae sitting idly by while the worst human rights crisis of the last half-century is played out in “helth-clinics” in our neighborhoods. We don’t want to believe that our friends and neighbors and even pastors and familiy members actually celebrate the virtues of planned parenthood. Such thought are hard to bear for those whom we know and love. It is far eaisier to believe they are being tricked, duped or manipulated by some grand conspiricay in Washington than to believe that they are actually unrepentantly evil in their choices. It is far easier to belive that our neigbors are manipulated into failing to see the humanity of the unborn than it is to believe that they are so coldly indifferent to the face of God in their fellow human beings.

David

I met him first when he was governor of Georgia, at a political rally to which I was sent to represent my father, who couldn’t attend, and then, later, at his Presidential Library, in Atlanta. He acted the same toward me at both points in his life–separated by more than twenty years.

Not that we don’t have the right to judge, but not in terms of what’s forgivable and what’s not…

David

I recall a letter to the editor of our local diocesean newspaper, and the writer stated that President Bush’s war in Iraq was an unforgiveable sin.

Yes, war and violence can be sinful, but unforgiveable? I’m afraid that too often we succumb to our mere emotions, and intellectually put our faith and our knowledge of the Gospel on hold.

I will admit to such.
thanks

David