What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in
Education?
Toppling
Dominos
Anti-Christians
don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's
Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic
Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of
Secularism
"Don't Impose Your
Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death
Warrant?
Court Ordered
Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War
Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for
Catholics in this Election
Christians
Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic
Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay
Marriage
Whose Side are You
on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake
Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields
Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion
Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way,
Baby
The Incarnational
Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told
You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them. How Else
Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be
Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of
Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or
Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But
One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the
Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with
homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality,
and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of
Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well,
Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong
Side
"These are the
Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few
are Married
"...Prepare him for
additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a
Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in
the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a
Person?
The Point of a Point of
View
Politically Correct,
Morally Depraved
Population
Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress
through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for
Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be
schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality
Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass
Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull
the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to
Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal
if...
Get Rid of that Worthless
Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues
Prior to Voting
|
|
by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
Dutch Treats
Holland or the Netherlands as the country prefers to be called is considered one of the most liberal countries in the world. It has legalized prostitution and same-sex marriages. It tolerates unopposed use of “soft” drugs and prosecution of hard drug manufacture and use is best described as lax to none. Finally if anyone is overcome with all this happiness there is legalized euthanasia. This is the sort of world toward which secular humanistic elements of our society would direct us. Should we look forward to these Dutch treats?
Let us take up first the case of legalized prostitution. The benefits are alleged to be a lowering of disease and of rape. Also the women who used to ply their trade on the streets are not subject to exploitation and abuse. The reality is that the trade leads to an increase of sexually transmitted diseases even in the case of “protected” sex. Since condoms have a failure rate of about 13% in preventing pregnancy they are a poor guard against the spread of a virus which can occur 100% of time independently of ovulation. The lives of women in the trade have been destroyed. Women are imported from third world countries to participate in the trade. The opportunities for adultery cannot enhance the stability of marriage. It cannot upgrade the status of women to display them in show case windows like meat in a butcher ship as is done in the brothel districts.
The Dutch have recently approved same-sex marriages. If love is to be the determinant of the form of marriage, then why should there not be polygamy, incest, three-way marriages in which a bisexual person is involved, or even union with other species? Children of lesbian couples will be deprived of a father and the doleful consequences of that are all too well documented in our own nation to need further emphasis. Not many surveys have been made about the effect on children of same-sex marriages but those that exist suggest that these children have a higher percentage of orientation to the same sex than children of heterosexual unions do. The only way to justify homosexuality on moral grounds is to state that purely recreational sex is morally acceptable. Is tha the message you want to give to your teenager?
The Dutch have liberalized laws against narcotics supposedly to avoid the problems associated with criminal distribution of illegal drugs. There are even coffeehouses in which marijuana is sold over the counter. The results are not as officials had hoped. Drug addiction tripled since the liberalization of drug laws. Holland now has twice as many heroin addicts per capita than Britain, which has a serious addiction problem. Permissive attitudes toward drug usage result in few arrests of cocaine and heroin users. Amsterdam’s police blame the significant rise in crime on the liberal drug policy. The city’s 7,000 addicts are blamed for 80% of all property crime and Amsterdam’s burglary rate is now twice that of Newark, New Jersey. Marijuana use among students increased 250% from 1984 to 1992. During the same period shootings rose 40%, car thefts 62%, and holdups 69%. The murder rate in Holland is three times that of the United States. Holland has become the drug capital of Western Europe. Drugs used in the United Kingdom and France mainly originate in Holland or pass through it. Holland has become the place for drug traffickers to work. The greatest drug problem facing European youth today comes from synthetic drugs like ecstasy and amphetamines. Most of these drugs are made in or come from Holland. Holland is Europe’s supermarket for drugs. All attempts by various countries to legalize drugs have proved disastrous. Examples can be found in England, Spain, and Switzerland, all of which experienced increased addiction and crime and, as a result, have reversed their liberal attitudes and laws.
Some may not be disturbed by the rise in addiction since people should be able to do what they want with their own bodies and drugs do not hurt other people—only the people who use them. This is a totally unrealistic view. What about flashbacks which are characteristic of LSD use? Suppose a user has flashback while driving or operating machinery. Does the consequent accident hurt only the user? A 1994 Newsweek report stated, “Drugs now suffuse 80 percent of the caseload; sexual and physical assaults that once taxed the imagination are now common.” There are estimates of 100,000 babies a year born addicted to cocaine. In Philadelphia 80% of parents who beat their children to death were under the influence of drugs and alcohol. The mental imbalance caused by drugs leads to rash decisions and often to violent behavior. Drug usage affects everyone in the form of higher insurance rates, more taxes for drug rehabilitation programs, and money for court cases due to the increased number of drug-related offenses.
The last Dutch treat we will mention is legalized euthanasia. This was supposed to be a compassionate move that allowed “free choice” to patients suffering pain from terminal diseases. The reality is that doctors kill 8% of the patients in Holland. Medical killing in the Netherlands takes several forms: (1) euthanasia; (2) physician-assisted suicide; (3) life-terminating acts without explicit request; (4) deaths related to treatment of pain and symptoms given with the intention of hastening death, and (5) deaths related to withholding or withdrawing treatment done with intention of hastening death. In a study done in 1995, 26,426 persons were killed in these ways. Of these we ma assume that in the first two ways, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, the patients who were 3,524 in number, gave consent. The remainder, numbering 22,902, were not necessarily consulted about hastening their deaths. Overall, there was a 60% increase in all forms of medical killing from 1990 to 1995.
Many old people fear hospitals. Ten percent of the elderly responding to a survey, which did not mention euthanasia, said that they feared their doctors would kill them without their consent. One senior-citizen group printed wallet cards that tell doctors their bearer opposes euthanasia. Dutch doctors under the Nazis refused orders to eliminate the elderly. It took only a generation to transform what was a war crime to an act of compassion. Apparently when it comes to treatment of the elderly the Dutch now agree that Hitler had it right after all.
If the secular humanists think that this brave new world, which is an implementation of their ideology, is what they would like to see in the United States I invite them to move to the Netherlands. For my part I prefer not to go Dutch.
