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Genesis315
Guest
Is the culture of death, specifically abortion, more intense today than ever? Or has it always been there, just not promoted? Are there any statistics on this?
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coralewisjr
Guest
Satan has been around for a long time, and if I’m correct, infanticide was legal in ancient Rome (not so different from most countries today with abortion). Pope John Paul II just gave it a name.
my Mother my Confidence,
Corinne
my Mother my Confidence,
Corinne
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JimG
Guest
Yes, the culture of death has been around for a long time, BUT in the United States, since 1973–the year of Roe v Wade, it has taken boundless leaps forward. There were nowhere near 1.5 million abortions per year before 1973. Also, there were no gay marriages, fewer divorces, and much more chastity. The changes that have taken place in the last 50 years are comparable in scope to the speed with which the Roman Empire fell.
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ImperialPhoenix
Guest
I often wonder how to leave behind the culture of death since that is what I realy want to do.
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CARose
Guest
I suggest that to leave behind the culture of death we need to pray, pray, pray. Eucharistic Adoration, fasting, and making reparations for the sins of our times are also important.
CARose
CARose
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puzzleannie
Guest
the world’s oldest religion, worship of the Goddess, which predates the Greek pantheon, Judaism and all other religions, is based on human sacrifice, specifically of children. She has different names in different cultures, and is identified with the Earth, mother of all living things, in other words “Mother Nature”, but her worship was known in all primitive societies. Her adepts through the ages were skilled in drugs and actions that resulted in contraception and abortion, and their services are the main reason the cults stayed alive even after the coming of Christianity. New Age “spiritualities” including Wicca are based on this cult.
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HagiaSophia
Guest
The culture of death, both physical and spiritual has been with mankind since sin was first introduced into the world – the Creator of life is all positive, life giving, life sustaining, life enhancing – the opposite of God is the harbinger of death, destruction, and mayhem.
Few stop to consider that the battle for our souls is so prolonged and so heavy throughout all time – how valuable indeed must souls be to count for so much in the spiritual realm. Many never awaken to their true value, their true essence.
Few stop to consider that the battle for our souls is so prolonged and so heavy throughout all time – how valuable indeed must souls be to count for so much in the spiritual realm. Many never awaken to their true value, their true essence.
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InstaurareSacra
Guest
I’d actually push that date back to 1965, the year Griswold v. Connecticut was decided, and the wide acceptance of contraception. Griswold was the whole beginning to all this “right to privacy” nonsense. With rampant contraception, the contraceptive mentality set in, and with it an increase in sex outside marriage, adultery, divorce, and abortion.
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jlw
Guest
1965 would not have happened had it not been for Margaret Sanger 40 years earlier telling us how we could “solve our race problem”.
Oh, and the Anglican Church being the first mainline chruch to cave on contraception in 1930.
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InstaurareSacra
Guest
jlw said:
Quite true. Pope Pius XI lmust have had Sanger in mind when he wrote Casti Connubii, which is still so relevant today in our barbaric society:
- But another very grave crime is to be noted, Venerable Brethren, which regards the taking of the life of the offspring hidden in the mother’s womb. Some wish it to be allowed and left to the will of the father or the mother; others say it is unlawful unless there are weighty reasons which they call by the name of medical, social, or eugenic “indication.” Because this matter falls under the penal laws of the state by which the destruction of the offspring begotten but unborn is forbidden, these people demand that the “indication,” which in one form or another they defend, be recognized as such by the public law and in no way penalized. There are those, moreover, who ask that the public authorities provide aid for these death-dealing operations, a thing, which, sad to say, everyone knows is of very frequent occurrence in some places.
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mlchance
Guest
You give the neo-pagans too much credit. The origins of their religion are late-19th century. No earlier.
Close, but not quite. Griswold v. Connecticut was a good decision. The state had no business regulating the sale of contraceptives to married people (which, of course, says nothing contrary to the fact that contraception is immoral).
The constitutional problem is Roe v. Wade and (most especially) Doe v. Bolton. Griswold v. Connecticut was never intended to create an all-encompassing right to privacy. That particular act of legal legerdemain was accomplished by the likes of Justice Blackmun rendering a decision with only the barest connections to the Constitution.
But, to address the thread’s question, no, the culture of death is nothing new. What is new is the technological sophistication brought into that culture’s service. Human nature is today what it has always been, but with our new “toys,” we can kill on with ease on a scale that the likes of Genghis Khan couldn’t imagine.
– Mark L. Chance.
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InstaurareSacra
Guest
Under that reasoning, what business does the state have in regulating whether a married couple has a right to abort their child, or whether one person can sodomize another? Griswold was not a good decision. It provided a springboard for the nebulous concept of “privacy,” which finds no basis in the constitution. Justice Douglas stuck the camel’s nose under the tent, paving the way for Roe and Doe.
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mlchance
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The three situations aren’t comparable. Abortion ends the life of another human. It is only through the most tortured “logic” that anyone can maintain the state cannot prohibit killing a human. Griswold v. Connecticut cannot reasonably justify abortion. Sodomy laws are also another matter separate from abortion. Sodomy laws are unenforceable without resorting to an unacceptable level of police scrutiny.
– Mark L. Chance.
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puzzleannie
Guest
I did not state that modern day Wiccans and other new age practitioners invented Goddess worship, I said they have latched on to various aspects of a very ancient cult and incorporated it into their system which at its heart denies God the Creator and His gift of life.
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mlchance
Guest
But they haven’t really latched onto a very ancient cult. Neopaganism is thoroughly modern. The pretenses to antiquity are just that. There was never a Goddess worship cult. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of disparate and often competing cults, all of them polytheistic, some of which included a sort of “mother goddess” concept.
Neopagans are cherry pickers. They take this idea, that idea, another idea, cobbling them all together into an incoherent whole and then claim that they’ve rediscovered the original religion of the ancient world. The only problem is that the claim doesn’t withstand historical scrutiny. It is comparable to Mormonism, which also makes all sorts of bogus claims about ancient history in order to create a veneer of plausability for its absurd doctrines.
None of which, of course, changes the fact that neopaganism denies the truth about God and the world he created.
– Mark L. Chance.
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puzzleannie
Guest
There was never a Goddess worship cult. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of disparate and often competing cults, all of them polytheistic, some of which included a sort of “mother goddess” concept.
– Mark L. Chance.
I did not say there was ever one universal Goddess worship cult, I said every primitive culture has included Goddess worship, which it has, but not necessarily defined the Goddess in the same way. The links between the Goddess cults in the early cultures of Europe, Asia Minor, the Mid-East and North Africa, are however tied by many links that can and have been traced by anthropologists. The neopagans have scooped up a hodgepodge of beliefs and practices from more or less reliable sources (like the Golden Bough) and hobbled them into a number of vague incoherent practices and beliefs. The fact remains that from earliest antiquity there has existed a devotion to a cult of death that includes child sacrifice, and promotion to the point of religiosity of contraceptive and abortive techniques and medications.
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InstaurareSacra
Guest
I agree with you, but unfortunately the “Supreme” Court does not. Here’s my favorite paragraph from Planned Parenthood v. Casey:
Our law affords constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education. Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U.S. at 685. Our cases recognize “the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.” Eisenstadt v. Baird, supra, 405 U.S. at 453 (emphasis in original). Our precedents “have respected the private realm of family life which the state cannot enter.” Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166 (1944). These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State. [505 U.S. 852, emphasis mine].
Talk about rampant relativism!
And, according to the court, Griswold does justify abortion:
It should be recognized, moreover, that in some critical respects, the abortion decision is of the same character as the decision to use contraception, to which Griswold v. Connecticut, Eisenstadt v. Baird, and Carey v. Population Services International afford constitutional protection. We have no doubt as to the correctness of those decisions. [505 U.S. 852-53]***As with abortion, reasonable people will have differences of opinion about these matters. One view is based on such reverence for the wonder of creation that any pregnancy ought to be welcomed and carried to full term, no matter how difficult it will be to provide for the child and ensure its wellbeing. Another is that the inability to provide for the nurture and care of the infant is a cruelty to the child and an anguish to the parent. These are intimate views with infinite variations, and their deep, personal character underlay our decisions in Griswold, Eisenstadt, and Carey. The same concerns are present when the woman confronts the reality that, perhaps despite her attempts to avoid it, she has become pregnant.
Thus, I reiterate, *Griswold *was a bad decision.
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mlchance
Guest
Reinterate, yes. Demonstrate, no. The SCOTUS in Roe, Doe, and Casey went far beyond the Constitution. The “sweet mystery of life” clause from Casey is a clear indication of this fact. Contrary to the mental gymnastics engaged in by the SCOTUS majority, there is no direct line between Griswold and Casey. There isn’t any line at all between the two, and the majority’s post facto legal legerdemain doesn’t change this.
IOW, the problem wasn’t *Griswold *per se. The problem is the “penumbra” doctrine of rights invented by Justice Douglas. The problem, IOW, was the justices.
– Mark L. Chance.
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JimG
Guest
I can agree with that.
With Griswold, it seems to me the question should not be whether or not State regulation of contraceptives is good or bad law.
The question should have been whether there is anything in the Constitution which forbids such regulation. If there is not, then it ought to have been left up to legislatures. Finding a right to contraception in the penumbras is not really good enough for constitutional law.
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Traditional_Ang
Guest
InstaurareSacra:
Than you would have to push the date back to the Lambeth Conference of 1931. That’s when the Anglican Communion broke with over 1900 years of Church Tradition and became the first Christian denomination to Provisionally accept the legitimacy of Artificial Contraception.
The terms “Provisionally” and “medical necessity” were taken off either at the next Lambeth Quadrilateral or the one after that.
When Pope Pius VI released Humanae Vitae in 1967, the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches were the only ones who taught as the Fathers taught on this issue.
In the 1980’s, the Orthodox fell away due to a misunderstand of the nature of Contraception and of the Contraceptive mentality.
Many “Catholic” Theologians have pushed for the Church to stop teaching as the Fathers taught and to join those on the other side “for the fellowship”. That would be disastrous. A view at the Divorce rate among the 2 groups should prove the point.
The divorce rate among CATHOLICS who use Artificial Contraception is almost indistinguishable from the general population (almost 50%).
The divorce rate among those who follow the Church’s Teaching and who don’t use Artificial Contraception is 4% (FOUR PERCENT)!
THAT’S INCREDIBLE! BUT TRUE!
But, the real change that Artificial Contraception brings is that a child goes from being a “Treasure” or “a gift from God”, to being a “Misstake” or a “Contraceptive Failure”.
How do you think children are going to feel once they’ve felt that? How do you think they’ll feel if they’ve felt the first? Which Children do you think will be happier and easier to raise and direct?
That may very well be the real tragedy of Artificial Contraception and the Contractive Mentality.
That’s worse than the promiscuity and the sexual license, because that destroys the succeeding generations.
Blessed are they who act to save God’s Little Ones. Michael
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