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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
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"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

When an alcoholic discovers that alcohol is killing him the logical step for him is to stop imbibing alcohol. Often he seeks a way to have his alcohol without suffering evil effects. Our society acts like him. When people want sex without children society obliges with contraception and abortion in case of contraceptive failure. When people do not want to fulfill their marriage vows society eases their path with no-fault divorce. When teenagers want recreational sex society gives them condoms or other contraceptives. Homosexuals want recognition for their immoral activity and Hawaii seems ready to recognize their "marriages." These things can best be described as attempts to improve society with immorality.

We would not consider it social betterment to decriminalize theft or rape. We would not regard removal of penalties for non-compliance with contracts as social progress. Why do we think that in sex and marriage we are improving society by adopting immorality?

Make no mistake, these social policies are immoral. The scripture says that, but so does right reason. One of the basic tendencies of human nature is to reproduce the species, something obviously necessary for perfecting human nature. Whatever promotes reproduction is good, whatever attacks the procreational good is evil. Contraception is evil precisely because it is a direct attack on that good. A corollary of this is that sex must always remain open to life because deliberate elimination of life is a direct attack on the procreational good. Common sense also requires that sex be restricted to marriage. More is needed than mere reproduction because children need the assistance of both parents in growing up. Empirical studies show that children in those circumstances do better on every measure than children in any other circumstance. That is why societies of all sorts have condemned fornication, which brings forth children to parents who are not committed to each other and to them. They also condemn adultery, which threatens the marriage bond and leaves parentage of children in doubt with the result that there is reluctance to support them. It is no accident that the institution of marriage has endured in all cultures and that attempted substitutions have failed miserably. One can expect negative consequences from separating sex and procreation.

Many married persons want fewer or no children and separate life and love by contraception. They desire recreational sex without responsibility. Although this violates the natural law they try to justify contraception in the name of love. The practice has logical and social consequences, however it is rationalized. In justifying contraception one logically justifies sex as a merely recreational activity. If that is the case, there is no principled way of condemning fornication, adultery, homosexuality, or masturbation, all of which are pleasurable. The principle has led to greater promiscuity, to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the developed world in spite of provision of contraceptives. Contracepting parents beget fornicating teenagers. How can parents tell a teenager not to practice recreational sex when that is what the parents have done for most of their married life? Teenagers feel no need to keep procreation and sex united when their parents have "justified" their separation.

Contraception also leads to abortion. Two million women become pregnant every year in spite of contraception. That is a threat to irresponsible sex and so abortion is seen as a justifiable backup. That leads inevitably to euthanasia because the rationale for killing babies can also be applied to useless, burdensome adults. Indeed women who use the contraceptive pill are abortionists now because the mini-pill does not prevent conception, but only implantation of the new human being, an early stage abortion. Such women cannot with consistency be opposed to abortion since they themselves practice it. Recreational sex has also led to stupid marriages with no hope of success, marriages that were not made in heaven, but in the back seats of automobiles and in motel rooms.

When society approved no-fault divorce it anticipated helping a few couples in difficult situations. The unexpected result was a quadrupling of divorces within a thirty year period, a tripling of the percentage of children living in single-parent homes so that half of all children born today will spend their formative years with only one parent. There are many studies that show this results in an enormous increase in poverty and in juvenile delinquency. Tragically no-fault divorce has not even removed its bitterness.

Society’s response to teenage sexual activity has been not to condemn it but to dispense condoms. This has led to increased sexual activity because society has in effect put its stamp of approval on sex that is "responsible." Greater sexual activity has brought increased transmission of AIDS because the condom is a false savior. The Alan Guttmacher Institute quotes an 18.4% failure rate among teenage girls under eighteen in preventing pregnancy. That means that more than half the users become pregnant within three years. In Adams City, Colorado high school, one of the first to pass out condoms, the birth rate among students soared to 31% above the national average of 58.1 births per 1,000 students annually. Condoms are considerably less effective in preventing transmission of disease which is not dependent upon ovulation. A University of Miami Medical School study showed that infected partners transmitted the AIDS virus to their partners at an annual rate of 11.2%, a rate that would infect more than half the uninfected partners within six years in spite of 100% use of condoms. Condomistic intercourse is not even rewarded with effective protection against disease.

We are on the brink of approving homosexual "marriage." If the good of society requires replacement of dying members why should it encourage homosexual unions? Extending them legal status will have negative consequences. Homosexual acts are the greatest single risk factor in contracting AIDS with no evidence that this will be mitigated by homosexuals in long-term relationships. Legalization of these unions will bring some coercive aspects. Marriage benefits will have to be extended to them and they will be allowed to adopt just as heterosexual couples are. Public schools would have to present homosexuality as a perfectly legitimate lifestyle. This will be the ultimate confirmation by society of the separation of sex and procreation resulting in an increase, if possible, of extramarital sexual activity and a corresponding growth in its evil results. Children of homosexuals may be induced to become homosexuals if nurture has anything to do with it. Even if someone proves that homosexual tendency results from nature and not nurture, children of homosexual "parents" will probably experience much the same as children of one-parent families with all their attendant social pathology.

Adopting immoral social policies produces more problems than it solves. To eliminate the problems it will be necessary to call people back to the moral law. It will be as easy to separate people from their immorality as it is to separate a drunk from his bottle. Keeping the moral law may be difficult, but it is better than enduring results of not keeping it. We do not have a blue-nosed God who frowns on our pleasures, but a loving Father who prescribes what is for our long-term happiness, however irksome observing sound morality may be. If not from loving obedience then perhaps from self-inflicted miseries of our immoral practice we may yet learn to abandon immoral social policy. "Thus says the Lord, your redeemer, the Holy one of Israel: I, the Lord, your God, teach you what is for your good and lead you on the way you should go. If you would hearken to my commandments, your prosperity would be like a river, and your vindication like the waves of the sea" (Isaiah 48:17-18).