Judie Brown
Cleaning up our personal environment
By Judie Brown
The latest environmentally correct headline claims that "Contraception Is the Answer to Climate Change."
Why is that? you might ask. Well, doesn't everyone know that human beings are the problem because, as the writer claims, there are "too many of them, and born too fast."
While this pessimistic gibberish has been around for many years, we would do well to think about it again, especially when considering one's individual bodily integrity. After all, contraception is not only dangerous but a pollutant to the human body.
Commentator Matt Walsh gets it. He recently wrote: "We are living in a strange time. Americans – younger Americans in particular – are obsessed with organic food, and grass fed beef, and free range chickens, and so on. We try our best to avoid 'chemicals' and anything that we have judged to be 'artificial.' We want desperately to live a 'natural' and 'simple' lifestyle. Yet, for the most part, we have not extended this principle to birth control."
Did you ever wonder how there can be such a disparity between how we claim to care about our planet and how we couldn't care less about our individual bodies and our souls?
Maybe not, but we should.
Setting aside the moral problems with the pill for a moment, consider its hidden dangers, including depletion of vitamins and minerals – the things that help us stay healthy. In addition, the pill, which is currently viewed as just another kind of medicine, can cause brain cancer, blood clotting that can lead to cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, and even death.
But even if these medical problems did not exist, there is a much more serious crisis that is rarely considered by mainstream educators, politicians, physicians, and sadly many Catholic prelates. We are referring to the spiritual disorder.
It starts with viewing sexual identity as something to be manipulated. Today's sex educators are very good at that! So are those involved in sex instruction programs in schools, as well as the media, social media, and elsewhere. They all sell a pleasure principle that is marketed to the young. It seems that few take the time to teach children the value of being chaste until marriage. By the time they are teenagers, the die is cast. Or should we say the door to living in a state of purity is nearly slammed shut?
The antidote, of course, is teaching truth as contained in the natural law and the word of God. Those best equipped to do this are the teachers and spiritual leaders ordained by God to teach His truth.
The roadmap for helping young people understand the value of keeping their personal environment, including their souls, pristine is contained in the beautiful encyclical Humanae Vitae. And while this is a Catholic teaching document, the truth of the natural law belongs to all men and women of good will.
The challenge is teaching it. Among the Catholic bishops who understand this is San Francisco's Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone. In Cordileone's insightful comments on Humanae Vitae, he noted the dissonance that exists "in a society that on the one hand accepts divorce, contraception and all kinds of sexual deviance as normal, and on the other hand is baffled when thousands of women complain of sexual harassment as part of the #MeToo movement."
You see, the #MeToo movement is a result of the predictable sexual promiscuity that was recognized in 1968 by Pope Paul VI himself when he wrote in Humanae Vitae that one of the consequences of the contraceptive craze is that "a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection."
And that is the point at which the argument for cleaning up our personal environment comes full circle. What each of us is called to do is treat our bodies with as much respect as we treat our exterior environment. If we love the earth and understand that we are to be conservators of it, then how much more should we be taking care of our own bodies and souls?
Cleaning up our personal environment is an urgent priority. Let's get to it.
© Judie Brown
August 20, 2019
The latest environmentally correct headline claims that "Contraception Is the Answer to Climate Change."
Why is that? you might ask. Well, doesn't everyone know that human beings are the problem because, as the writer claims, there are "too many of them, and born too fast."
While this pessimistic gibberish has been around for many years, we would do well to think about it again, especially when considering one's individual bodily integrity. After all, contraception is not only dangerous but a pollutant to the human body.
Commentator Matt Walsh gets it. He recently wrote: "We are living in a strange time. Americans – younger Americans in particular – are obsessed with organic food, and grass fed beef, and free range chickens, and so on. We try our best to avoid 'chemicals' and anything that we have judged to be 'artificial.' We want desperately to live a 'natural' and 'simple' lifestyle. Yet, for the most part, we have not extended this principle to birth control."
Did you ever wonder how there can be such a disparity between how we claim to care about our planet and how we couldn't care less about our individual bodies and our souls?
Maybe not, but we should.
Setting aside the moral problems with the pill for a moment, consider its hidden dangers, including depletion of vitamins and minerals – the things that help us stay healthy. In addition, the pill, which is currently viewed as just another kind of medicine, can cause brain cancer, blood clotting that can lead to cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, and even death.
But even if these medical problems did not exist, there is a much more serious crisis that is rarely considered by mainstream educators, politicians, physicians, and sadly many Catholic prelates. We are referring to the spiritual disorder.
It starts with viewing sexual identity as something to be manipulated. Today's sex educators are very good at that! So are those involved in sex instruction programs in schools, as well as the media, social media, and elsewhere. They all sell a pleasure principle that is marketed to the young. It seems that few take the time to teach children the value of being chaste until marriage. By the time they are teenagers, the die is cast. Or should we say the door to living in a state of purity is nearly slammed shut?
The antidote, of course, is teaching truth as contained in the natural law and the word of God. Those best equipped to do this are the teachers and spiritual leaders ordained by God to teach His truth.
The roadmap for helping young people understand the value of keeping their personal environment, including their souls, pristine is contained in the beautiful encyclical Humanae Vitae. And while this is a Catholic teaching document, the truth of the natural law belongs to all men and women of good will.
The challenge is teaching it. Among the Catholic bishops who understand this is San Francisco's Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone. In Cordileone's insightful comments on Humanae Vitae, he noted the dissonance that exists "in a society that on the one hand accepts divorce, contraception and all kinds of sexual deviance as normal, and on the other hand is baffled when thousands of women complain of sexual harassment as part of the #MeToo movement."
You see, the #MeToo movement is a result of the predictable sexual promiscuity that was recognized in 1968 by Pope Paul VI himself when he wrote in Humanae Vitae that one of the consequences of the contraceptive craze is that "a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection."
And that is the point at which the argument for cleaning up our personal environment comes full circle. What each of us is called to do is treat our bodies with as much respect as we treat our exterior environment. If we love the earth and understand that we are to be conservators of it, then how much more should we be taking care of our own bodies and souls?
Cleaning up our personal environment is an urgent priority. Let's get to it.
© Judie Brown
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