The Slippery Slope

 Pop quiz: Who said the following, "Birth control, as popularly understood today and involving the use of contraceptives, is one of the most repugnant of modern aberrations, representing a 20th century renewal of pagan bankruptcy." Was it (a) Cardinal Ottavianni (b) "Pope" Paul VI (c) Pope Pius XII or (d) none of the above? If you picked (d), you're correct; it was spoken by Dr. Walter A. Maier, a Lutheran minister and theology professor at Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary, St. Louis, in circa 1939. Most people are unaware of two facts: (1) No sect calling itself "Christian" (i.e., all Protestant and Eastern sects) ever accepted birth control as morally permissible prior to 1930, and (2) the anti-contraceptive laws passed in the 19th century in America were written and supported by an overwhelming Protestant majority in power for a majority Protestant country. So much for contraception being a "Catholic" issue.

 The Revolt Against God as Author of Life

 In 1930, the Anglican sect became the first denomination to allow for artificial contraception. Just ten years earlier, the Anglicans had issued Resolution 28 of the 1920 Lambeth Conference, in which they had stated, "We utter an emphatic warning against the use of unnatural means for the avoidance of contraception..." Having been increasingly exposed to the errors of nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the 1930 Lambeth Conference broke the moral unanimity existing between Protestant sects and the True Church when they passed resoultion #15, which reads as follows:

"Resolution 15

The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex

Where there is clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be necessary) in a life of discipline and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience." Voting: For 193; Against 67. 

This is a good example of a "hard case making a bad law." What are these "Christian principles" that justify "avoiding complete abstinence" which were never espoused from 33 AD until 1930? It was the idea of "the totality of the circumstances" which came to be known as "The Fundamental Option Theory" in ethics. This was peddled by arch-heretic Karl Rahner, who taught that one's "fundamental option" was either for or against God. People who are "for God" can commit specific acts that run contrary to that option (sin), but they do not necessarily change the person's fundamental option. What it did was (a) eliminate the seriousness of moral actions, and (b) effectively destroy the  truths of mortal and venial sin. One single act of a serious matter, done with full knowledge of its wrongfulness and consented to by the person, constitutes a mortal sin that (if unrepentant) will send him to Hell. This is mortal sin and it robs the soul of sanctifying grace. This truth of the Faith is denied by the Fundamental Option heresy. Even John Paul the Great Apostate condemned it (sort of) in Veritatis Splendor. 

When Roncalli ("Pope" John XXIII) set up a commission to "study the question of artificial contraception" the heretic gave the world the wrong idea that the condemnation of contraception was a matter which was open to change. The majority report of the commission in 1967 said contraception could be used "if the marriage was open to procreation in its totality." Montini ("Pope" Paul VI) sided against the majority due to the efforts of Cardinal Ottaviani who convinced him he would lose all moral authority if he were to allow contraception. (I wish Montini had allowed it, as it might have exposed him as the fraud and heretic he was--Ottaviani thought he was doing the world a favor at the time). The minority report rightly concluded that if "general openness to conception" is enough to justify contraception, no single act of sodomy, or mutual masturbation could be considered mortally sinful either.

In 1958, the Anglicans broadened their allowance of contraception, and in 1961, The National Council of Churches adopted the use of artificial birth control. The floodgates were open.

From Contraception to Abortion

Contraception leads to abortion in three ways: (1) certain methods kill the unborn child after fertilization, (2) abortion will be the "back-up plan" when contraception fails, and (3) it de-humanizes life by excluding God as the Author of Life. 

1. Methods that kill the unborn.

 Both the IUD and the "Pill" (to give but two examples) prevent a zygote (unborn baby at its earliest stage) from implanting in the uterus. These are "silent abortions" as life begins at conception. 

2. A Murderous Back Up

When a couple is not open all the time to conception, and birth control fails, abortion becomes the logical (and murderous) consideration. 

3. God is excluded 

Humans, not God, decide when (and if ) life is created. God is banned from the public square. To justify the abortion option, the unborn child must be de-humanized. If the unborn child is not outside the womb, it is considered "part of the woman's body" and her alleged "right to choose."

From Abortion to Euthanasia

 Euthanasia (sometimes called "mercy killing") can be defined as "the (alleged) painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable or painful disease, or in an irreversible coma." Notice that life is not sacred and suffering has no value. All hope of a comatose patient waking up or a disease being cured (even miraculously) is jettisoned, even though there are such cases. Euthanasia may be either (a) active, when the patient is given something to make them die, or (b) passive, when life support (or in some cases basic needs like food and hydration) are withdrawn. 

The connection between abortion and euthanasia was well made by prolife365.com:

"Ask yourself, why does euthanasia bother our consciences?

After all, we have already codified into law that a mother may see to it her own child be murdered (through abortion). Thus, we have accepted the legal and immoral precedent that someone may murder someone else.

Given that our culture has accepted this immoral premise, it has no legal, moral or other argument against euthanasia.

Where the unborn child represents a threat to the mother’s socioeconomic well-being, the terminally-ill patient serves as a drain on finances. Where the unborn child’s right to life is usurped by those older than her, the terminally-ill patient’s right to life is surpassed by those more physically healthy.

Where the unborn is killed for eugenics motivations from having Down Syndrome or other abnormalities, the terminally-ill patient has the plug pulled for becoming a physically- or mentally-unfit inconvenience, as well."

 And what about the elderly? When does the so-called "right to die" become a "duty to die" that may one day be imposed on the elderly and "unfit"? It may affect you or someone you love sooner than you think. Remember in the not too distant past, what was considered repugnant may become the "new normal":

"Not surprisingly, given his core belief in the notion of the ‘survival of the fittest’, Hitler embraced the ideas of ‘conventional’ eugenics, but wanted to take them to an extreme level.  In a propaganda film like ‘Opfer der Vergangenheit’ (Victims of the Past), shown in 1937, the Nazi vision was made clear. Patients in mental asylums were revealed as suffering in their own minds, whilst the commentary made clear the cost to the state of keeping these people in care. The implication was obvious – if these people did not exist then the Nazi state would be much better off.  

The route by which this ideological notion – that it would be better to remove the seriously disabled  – became a practical reality reveals a great deal about how policy could be made in the Nazi state. Sometime early in 1939 the father of a severely disabled child wrote a petition to Hitler asking that his son should be killed – a so called ‘mercy’ killing. The petition landed in the Fuehrer’s Chancellery, controlled by an ambitious Nazi called Philipp Bouhler and staffed by his no less ambitious underlings. The petition was chosen from thousands of others to be seen personally by Hitler. When he saw it he ordered Dr Brandt to consult with the child’s doctors and then, subsequently, the child was killed. Hitler then authorized other children to be dealt with the same way. Eventually, around 8,000 children were killed, mostly by poisonous injections." (See http://ww2history.com/key_moments/Holocaust/Hitler_authorizes_killing_of_disabled)

 All this is possible when humans usurped the right of God alone over human life. Through contraception, and the rejection of Traditionalist Catholic teaching, we move to abortion, then to euthanasia. As Dostoyevsky famously wrote, "If God does not exist, then everything is permitted!"