Albert, the Activist Director for Defend Life in Maryland responded recently to a question asked by a local radio talk show host named Chris Core. Here is what he had to say.
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On a recent WMAL A.M. 630 radio program, Chris Core asked why anyone would think we live in a "CULTURE OF DEATH."
Here was my response.
Albert
January 24, 2006
Mr. Chris Core,
As I write in resonse to your radio program in which you posed to your audience the question "What does the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XIII, mean when he makes reference to the 'pervasive culture of death?' daily events show the topic to only be getting hotter. On your Thursday program, to my shocking dismay, I heard you defend the assisted suicide law in Oregon. As you scratch your head wondering where the Pope's coming from, the fact is the "CULTURE OF DEATH" is so pervasive that many aspects of it have become considerably mainstream and acceptable as if to be quite unnoticable. Abortion alone, which you conceded to by saying, "Okay, but what else?" would in itself be enough to judge a society as having a "culture of death," but ours has digressed even far beyond killing innocent unborn babies. In fact, while the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. serves to remind us that "this must never happen again," it is indeed happening again; it's just that the classes of people have changed. But the same language and the same arguments are being used all over again; only now, the deception is greater. The term culture of death, of course, was not coined by our current Holy Father. It was actually used quite considerably by Pope John Paul II and referenced often in his writings when addressing the issues of life and death, family, culture and society. I suggest Catholics, and non-Catholics as well, sit down and read them so they know where the Church stands on these issues and why. Have you read The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World (Familiaris Consortio),The Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae), The Splendor of Truth (Veritatis Splendor), Casti Canubii, Humane Vitae (On Human Life), On the Dignity and Vocation of Women (Mulieris Dignitatem) The Identity and Status of the Human Embryo, The Theology of the Body, On Faith and Reason (Fides et Ratio), The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality, Life-sustaining Treatments and the Vegetative State, or The Christian Meaning Of Human Suffering (Salvifici Doloris)? These documents are just a few that reveal moral truths and help us as Catholics to be grounded in the truth in order to avoid being deceived. So, when someone says (as in the example you gave), "I have cancer, six months to live, a fear of lasting pain, and I choose to exercize my 'right' (sic) to 'end my life' because it is 'my personal decision,' one which is between my priest, my God and me (as one of your callers put it), you know to refer to the church document entitled Declaration on Euthanasia (Iura et Bona) which makes clear that "euthanasia and willful suicide are condemned (as) crimes against life." You will be able to respond from a morally grounded foundation because you decided to ask the question, "Well, what does the Church have to say about it?" And, by the way, not even a Catholic priest has the authority to advise against authentic moral Catholic teaching; nor does a Catholic have a right to act against church teaching if inerrantly advised by a priest or bishop to do so, for any reason.
The Catholic Church is always addressing the ills of society and directing us as Catholics to respond accordingly. As Catholics, we must recognize the Church's authority to speak on such matters of morality and our duty to submit to that authority and be obedient to it. Why? It is the vessel through which God Himself by the power of the Holy Spirit speaks to His children on these difficult moral questions. I won't take the space and time here to address the specific issues, per se. We all have a duty to do that on our own, primarily by going to the right sources. Currently, as Activist Director for Defend Life, a prominent local pro-life organization, I have had the opportunity to talk to a number of people on life issues. One commonality I have noticed in listening to your radio callers arises from a distorted view of truth, one in which many believe all truth is subjective, not objective. While there are countless stories of hardships and sufferings people bear, one cannot determine from thoses cases alone the right moral actions that should be taken. There must be a foundation of truth from which to go by. Pope John Paul II said the greatest sin of the 20th Century is "the loss of the sense of sin." Arguably, the reason for this is the common acceptance of subjective morality. If each individual's personal experiences and emotions trump reason and moral absolutes, the result is confusion and societal chaos, as you are seeing today. This subjectivism, that decisions be made subject only to one's intentions, feelings and desires, play on the emotions of people and lead to irrational decisions and behavior. The culture goes the way of comfort and ease, buying into the lies perpetuated by the one who, as Scripture says, is a "liar, a deceiver and murderer from the beginning," Satan himself. If enough people buy into the lies, they become justified in the eyes of the majority. Those who perpetuate this CULTURE OF DEATH have been called by Father Paul Marx as the Death Peddlers.
The Death Peddlers would have you believe the woman's "choice" for abortion grants her "freedom" (to do with her body as she wishes), that it "liberates" her from "unwanted pregnancy," which is "disease" and ensures "good health care for women." IN TRUTH, abortion can cause hemorrhaging, perforation of the uterus or other organs. It greatly increases the risks of breast cancer, cervical cancer, and uterine cancer. It increases the risks of tubal pregnancy, premature births, and sterility. It increases the risk of destructive behavior, i.e. alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and sexual promiscuity; it increases the likelihood of depression, suicidal tendencies, unreprieved grief, and anorexia. Need I mention that your local abortion facility is free from any government regulations in most states. Some, like Maryland, have none at all. Veterinary clinics are safer than your local abortuary. But, of course, we know keeping abortion "legal" is to keep it "SAFE." Or, so they say!
The Death Peddlers would have you believe the "fetus" is not a baby, not a child in the womb, but "tissue," or a "parasite," or only having the "potential" of life; that, since it is a part of the woman, it is her own "personal property" to do with it as she so wishes. And therefore, when we come to find out that there are American companies in the business of selling dissected baby body parts from abortion, should we be surprised? Besides, it's a way to provide an abortion doctor (sic) with the means to "turn his patient's decision into something wonderful," as one flyer targeting the abortionists' business once put it. The baby, having endured pain after the 17th week (if not sooner), is either burned to death by saline solution, ripped apart by some sharp instrument, or sucked out by vacuum. Its body parts, usually delivered by Fed Ex, UPS, or private courier, are sold to university researchers, pharmaceutical firms, and government agencies. They may get intact fetuses, batches of eyes, livers, or whatever, but all in mass quantities. You probably weren't aware that abortion is big business (it isn't called the abortion 'INDUSTRY' for nothing). But don't expect them to admit they sell baby body parts. They provide a "retrieval service" of "diagnostic" or "biologic specimens." Theirs is a mastery of language manipulation and deception. They are indeed very good at it.
The Death Peddlers would have you believe Planned Parenthood is a benevolent organization, seeking only to protect a woman's "right to choose." In fact, it is the very organization originally named The American Birth Control League whose publications in the late 1930's espousing Eugenics by its founder Margaret Sanger were read and inserted into Nazi propaganda. The name was changed to disassociate the organization from that fact. Her eugenic movement to produce, as she put it, "more children from the fit - less from the unfit - is the chief aim of birth control." Her aim was to increase the numbers of the elite in society and to decrease the numbers of society's lower echelons, in order to "create a race of thoroughbreds." It fits well with the mold of Planned Parenthood today that targets minorities (especially blacks, who today make up roughly 11% of the population and undergo nearly 40% of all abortions). Planned Parenthood's "Negro Project" developed in the 1950's is alive and well, in spirit and in practice, and not only amongst the lower classes; even the "elite" have bought into it.
The Death Peddlers would have you believe that "SEX EDUCATION" for children, since they are likely to "do it" anyway, will lead them to practice "SAFE SEX." What most people are unaware of is that most sex-ed programs are designed and written by Planned Parenthood, who just may have a motivating interest in what the sexual practices of young people are. When you consider that while they make tens of millions in the surgical killing of babies by abortion, their primary source of income comes from the selling of birth control (roughly 70% of their profits). They give the birth control out to the children in the schools, and should that fail they are there in the ready to direct your daughter to the local abortion "clinic" (abortuary). When the preventive measure (birth control) fails, the remedy is abortion. Planned Parenthood profits from the sale of both. They have a problem, though, and that is each year they lose 50% of their birth control users because of the side effects from it. Thus, they must find a way to make up for that loss. Hence, the sex-ed programs targeting the younger and younger girls. In truth, premarital sex is never "safe." As C. Everett Koop, the former U.S. Surgeon General said, "When you have sex with someone, you are having sex with everyone they are having sex with for the last ten years, and everyone they and their partners have had sex with for the last ten years." Sex-ed doesn't lead to safe sex; it leads to promiscuity and the practice of sex; always very dangerous and even sometimes fatal, for unmarried youth and children. Those who engage in premarital sexual activity are very likely to contract an incurable sexually-transmitted disease. Right now, one in five Americans has one, and three million more teenagers will have one by the end of the year. While no more than five STD's existed in 1955, there are some FIFTY today. Some are resistant to treatment, and some are contagious while showing no symptoms. Some increase the possiblillity of contracting AIDS, causing chronic pain, permanent damage, cancer and sterility. Not likely to ensure a life of happiness for one's children. Tip your hat to SEX-ED!
The Death Peddlers would have you believe that they have a young girl's best interest at heart when the nurse at school finds out she's pregnant and they "choose" to NOT inform the parents. It's "patient confidentiality, don't you know? Planned Parenthood does not believe in parental knowledge and consent for minors seeking abortion. That would cut into their business, and they're very particular about that! And as they say at Planned Barrenhood, "Every child a wanted child." Were they to complete their slogan, it might say. "Every child a wanted child, every unwanted child a dead baby!" Never mind the fact that the majority of the fathers of the babies of these pregnant teen-age girls happen to be over 18! Planned Parenthood does a fantastic job of protecting pedophiles and child molesters. They do everything they can to "not know about it." Otherwise, they would "have to report it. (Check out LIFE DYNAMICS for the facts about this)
The Death Peddlers would have you believe that harvesting embryonic stem cells lends great promise to the cures of many diseases. In fact, such research has not produced a single human therapy, not one. It has only created tumors and exacerbated patients' conditions. In the process, an already conceived human being in its earliest embrionic stage of life is destroyed. But to the death peddlers, what's the loss of a defenseless embryo with no chance at life when promise for miraculous cures are so close? Besides, doesn't the end justifies the means? Meanwhile, therapies are being developed and patients cured of numerous maladies every day through the use of adult stem cells, umbilical cord-blood stem cells, and embryonic germ cells obtained from miscarriages, none of which requires the destruction of an embryonic human being in the earliest stage of life. Some 65 diseases and conditions, including paralysis, heart disease, various cancers (including leukemia), blindness, cirrhosis of the liver, sickle cell anemia, and on and on, have affected thousands of individuals with remarkable cures or improvement, but such research does not need an entire infrastructure and the production of thousands of jobs and federal funding. But embryonic stem cell research does. And whether it cures anyone or not, it's enough to give a boost to the economy. Want to follow the trail of death? Soaked in the color of blood, it's also the color of green, marked with dollar signs. And the people of California fell right onto it, hook, line and sinker. Fortunately, a lawsuit is holding that one up. Hopefully, other states won't fall into the same false-promising trap.
The Death Peddlers would have you believe that homosexuality is an "alternative lifestyle," that homosexuals are "born that way," and being unable to change, should just embrace their being "gay" by living it out openly and condemning anyone who has anything to say to the contrary. We're told that two men or women who "love" each other in a committal relationship should be allowed to "marry" and be given all the same rights as "the breeders" (yes, they use this term!) Besides, it would be unfair to deny the same "rights" to homosexuals enjoyed by heterosexuals. In truth, homosexuality is not a genetic trait; homosexuals are not born that way, which is a lie propagated by the "gay agenda." Nor is it something homosexuals absolutely have to live with. Help is available and healing is possible through therapy, but only for those who have a willingness to recognize their need for help, not a desire to legitimize disordered sexual behavior. A life lived out in the practice of homosexual behavior leads only to disease, disappointment, self-destruction, and death. To allow homosexuals to marry would do nothing to further human rights, but would be the nail in the coffin for marriage. Marriage is supposed to be sacred, covenantal, and sacramental with the couple enjoined by God, not some fraudulent fabrication concocted by man. No-fault divorce has done enough damage to marriage. Allowing homosexuals to marry would destroy it altogether.
The Death Peddlers would have you believe that if we raise enough money for AIDS research, AIDS patients will be cured and AIDS will go away if only everyone uses the condom and enough people come out to WALK FOR THE CURE! In fact, the AIDS virus is over 450 times smaller than a single sperm, so if the condom fails 15% percent of the time in preventing pregnancy when used correctly, how successful do you expect the condom to be in preventing AIDS, as small as it is? No genius needed to figure that one out!
The Death Peddlers would have you believe that it is humane to "let someone go" when their time is up by denying them food and water because you, and they, surely wouldn't want to "live that way." In truth, it is not compassionate care to starve someone to death because you wouldn't want to "live that way." Theresa (Terri) Schindler Schiavo, who was not in a coma, was not on life support, was responsive to visits by family and friends, but was merely handicapped, brain-damaged in an accident, was ordered to be killed by starvation and dehydration. As her sister Suzanne says, precedent has now been set to justify killing the vulnerable and disabled, that we are not a society that recognizes the "dignity" of life, but rather the "quality" of life, and this is a very dangerous precedent to have set.
The Death Peddlers would have you believe that in addressing poverty in our "overpopulated" world, rather than provide starving refugees in need of food, water, shelter and basic health services, it is compassionate on their part to instead provide for them all all the abortion-suction machines, abortifacient drugs and devices they could ever want. In fact, the world in not overpopulated, which is pure myth. People are not "useless eaters," as they would say, but rather the greatest resource on the planet. And the poor deserve no less than the well-off in respect to their human dignity. Unfortunately, that isn't often what the international community gives them.
The players that promote a Culture of death thrive on their ability to manipulate language and to distort reality and truth. Theirs is a language all to itself, one referred to as the semantics of oppression, used by an industry that markets death and profits from it; from abortifacient birth control that chemically kills an early developed child to partial-birth abortion in the days just prior to birth, to the harvesting of largely developed body parts or fetal tissue. Now we hear of some cases where prisoners or dying patients have organs removed before they have even died.
I haven't even mentioned some of the obvious things your callers brought up. Just turn on your TV, change each channel every few seconds and observe the content, look at the video games young people are playing, listen to the words of their music (or RAP, which is not music at all!), see how popular porn is with both adults and children (more watch porn than watch all sporting events!), look at how much violence there is from the screen to the streets. Images of the skull and bones are all over the place (from soda cans to tatoos), many young people are into piercing their bodies, slashing the skin has become a modern-day fad, drug-abuse, casual sex and prostitution, immodesty, incessant rudeness, disrespect and impoliteness, government corruption and on and on. Can you still ask the question,
"What CULTURE of DEATH?"
One of the greatest obstacles we face in this battle being waged by people against people, besides vincible ignorance, is apathy and indifference. Maybe that would change if enough people knew the HARD TRUTH. There are serious consequences to all this, both on the human plane and in the spiritual realm. Simply put, the practice of chastity (before and within marriage) promotes a Culture of Life. The practice of illicit sex always leads to bodily and spiritual death. We are a nation that has spurned God and His Commandments. The family is under attack. History shows, and Scripture reveals, that when a nation turns away from God without coming to repentance, God withdraws his protection. His permitting will then allows that nation's enemies to prevail over them in order to call them back to their senses. Don't be surprised if for the first time in its founding, the United States soon faces this possible prospect. If we can ever hope to be a CULTURE OF LIFE, then there is much work to be done, many minds and hearts to be changed. Time, however, is short. Unless drastic changes are made, and made soon in the psyche of the people of this country, this nation will not survive. If Margaret Sanger were alive today, she would indeed be very proud of the "Culture of Death" she helped to construct. The article below will tell you why.
To be continued...
Albert
Bethesda. Maryland
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End of post - The rest will be posted tomorrow
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