MARY writes:

Mike Adams writes eloquently about the issue of abortion and he is right: pre-1973 thinking about abortion is not enough. How about pre-contraception?

Elizabeth Anscombe wrote this of contraception in 1972: “… what can’t be otherwise we accept; and so we accept death and its unhappiness. But possibility destroys mere acceptance. And so it is with the possibility of having intercourse and preventing conception…This can make the former state of things look intolerable…” 

“Possibility destroys mere acceptance.” Wise words. The possibility of being able to bend conception to our will destroyed our acceptance of children freely in marriage. We rejected uncontrolled conception, and accepted contraception. The inevitable sexual emboldenment that followed this release of sexual relations from procreation let to further intolerance and rejection: that of the unborn child we might mistakenly conceive. And then a new possibility, one never dreamed of before: legalized abortion. Poor acceptance, how we’ve wronged you. We once understood as a society that marriage calls us to be co-creators with our Creator: that was our gift from God and our enticement to procreate within the bounds of marriage, for the sake of children produced and the human race as a whole. The simplest peasant understood this instinctively. But He has been elbowed out of the way now. We are in charge of all things reproductive. We will decide when (and when not), how (and how not), at what age, and with whom (oh dear) we will procreate and raise our children. And we will be married only if we say so. God help us all.

So I would say pre-1930 thinking is about right. That was the year the Anglican Church first loosened it’s restrictions on contraception, which was officially forbidden by all Christian denominations up until that point.

— Comments —

Fitzgerald writes:

Starting in the late 1960’s (approximately), Fr. Marx, the founder of Human Life International, was admonishing Christians that legalization of contraception would lead to abortion and then to general acceptance of homosexual relationships. He was considered to be nuts and a doomsaying extremist.. need I say more?

Two talks on the Institute for Catholic Culture are worthy of attention. One is a recent talk by Fr. Robert Spitzer discussing his book, “Ten Universal Principles.” In this book, he covers the core ten universal principles that Western civilization is grounded upon from a purely natural law perspective. In particular, the book devastatingly highlights how both Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade decisions are similar and how the court, and by extension our country, is intentionally ignoring the reality of personhood. This extends to other difficulties that factions on both poles of the political spectrum have with treating corporations and other entities as persons under the law. Just listen to the first 10 minutes of his talk… for those who aren’t Catholic, never fear, his entire premise is natural law, not theology.

Details on the 1930 Lambeth conference and how it almost immediately lead to nearly all Protestant denominations accepting contraception can be found here:

Simply put, contraception destroys the uniqueness of the marital embrace and makes marriage and sex pedestrian. It takes what is in essence a sacred act of love, and subjugates it to mere human, fallible passions. It debases the physical act of human love and by definition humanity and humanness. This does not deny the unitive aspects or the importance of it in a marriage, but to retain it’s dignity it must remain within the procreative context. Otherwise, it’s just sex, it’s just a physical act and why should special status be given to just relationships between men and women? Contraception begets abortion which begets acceptance of homosexual “marriage” and potentially even more debased unions. Sadly, fighting homosexual marriage in and of itself without attacking the root cause is a losing battle.

Laura writes:

Douglas Farrow in the latest issue of Touchstone also made this argument regarding same-sex “marriage’ and contraception.

Art from Texas writes:

I agree wholeheartedly with Mary. This is not a matter of doctrine alone, but something that can be seen in our own lives.

Bruno writes:

I once asked a Catholic about whether a Catholic married couple could decide not to have children in order to save money for a trip together to, let’s say, Paris, just for the sake of tourism; that is, a romantic voyage between two married adults in love with each other. And with no “unnatural” contraception involved, either: just regular sexual abstinence. My Catholic friend’s answer was that the couple probably would be sinning by doing this, for, according to the Catechism, that decision would most likely be considered “egoistic,” and, because of that, sinful. I’ve studied the question, asked a few more people, and I concluded that his answer was correct and in accordance with the Magisterium’s teachings. So, basically, we can safely conclude that the divinely ordained duty of a Catholic couple is to keep delivering babies until that is no longer biologically possible, and that the couple’s resources must all be thoroughly put to that directive, be they meager or plentiful.

Considering this, I personally feel obliged to praise contraception, both as a technological improvement and as a social practice. It has delivered people from what can only be rightfully considered as a sort of semi-conscious self-enslavement. At least concerning the Catholic worldview; but Protestant pre-1930 wasn’t so different, concerning this particular matter, or was it? Can’t we all see the good side of it?

Laura writes:

The prohibition against contraception was once accepted by the Protestant denominations too.

Secondly, Natural Family Planning is perfectly acceptable under Catholic moral teaching and it is possible to limit the number of children with NFP, which involves declining intercourse during a woman’s fertile days. Also, if a woman breastfeeds a child for two years, which is ideal for a baby anyway, she is likely to be infertile for that entire time (this is not true in all cases but it is very common.) It is possible to go to Paris with a baby.

I have to laugh at Bruno’s outrage though that a young couple may miss out on a trip to Paris. C’mon. Paris is a great city, but it doesn’t really compare to the rewards and adventures of bringing human beings into the world and raising them. And when one is old, and in failing health, the company of one’s grown offspring beats memories of the Louvre anyday. Besides, you can go to Paris when your children are raised. By the way, the average woman today is infertile for more than 30 years, not including the days in which she is infertile before menopause because of her normal cycle, breastfeeding, or pregnancy.

Laura continues:

In response to Bruno’s point about “semi-conscious self-enslavement,” I think “self-enslavement” is a good adjective to apply to the modern hedonist who may have sex for years, decades even, and not produce anything but fun.

Bruno writes:

The Catechism says:

“2368 A particular aspect of this responsibility concerns the regulation of procreation. For just reasons, spouses may wish to space the births of their children. It is their duty to make certain that their desire is not motivated by selfishness but is in conformity with the generosity appropriate to responsible parenthood. Moreover, they should conform their behavior to the objective criteria of morality:”

Let me stress this period: “not motivated by selfishness.” The question is whether saving money by not having more kids for a trip to Paris for tourism would constitute selfishness or not. Of course, I would also formulate many other examples: buying a luxury car, a new home, saving for plastic surgery, anything like that is certainly deemed “selfish” by very strict Catholic standards.

Reading between the lines, Catholicism (and Christianity in general, in fact) is at minimum very harsh doctrine, at least by the common standards of my twenty-something generation.

Laura writes:

I think declining to have children so that one can go to Paris does qualify as selfish, and I would have to repeat my point that Paris is not what you think it is. Nor is a luxury car or a new home or plastic surgery. If life is “very harsh” without a trip to Paris then most of humankind has been deprived. For that trip to Paris, a couple may deny their children of siblings. That is a very harsh thing to do.

By the way, many people talk about the financial burdens of many children, but not the financial advantages. Children can, even when they are quite young, contribute to the family economy by at least doing household work.

My parents threw us all in the car (I have six siblings) when I was in high school and we went to a shore town and opened up a summer business. They could never have done that if they had only two children. We did endless work around the house too.

Kevin Stay writes:

Bruno stated, “So, basically, we can safely conclude that the divinely ordained duty of a Catholic couple is to keep delivering babies until that is no longer biologically possible, and that the couple’s resources must all be thoroughly put to that directive, be they meager or plentiful.”

No, that is not what we can safely conclude. One of God’s greatest gifts to us is recognition of our free agency. It is the duty of any Christian couple to work out with divine guidance and dialogue (aka prayer) the bringing of children into this world. I submit a couple guilty of sin is also one pregnant yet lacking the wherewithal to raise yet another child and provide for them the proper environment that they might become an honorable and virtuous person. At the same time, I suspect the affirmation of a decision to refrain from further child bearing will generally be given to those actually living with top priorities other than trips to Paris or other such earthly distractions far outside that which is sufficient for their needs.

Bruno writes:

Well, I believe that it is a very personal matter. There are those that simply do not want to have any children and just enjoy life together, childless. According to Catholic teachings, that intend to be universal (that is what the word “catholic” means), they are akin to outlaws, concerning what Catholics deem to be the natural and divine laws. Now we know that Protestant churches used to share the same beliefs concerning this matter.

That’s why I praise the introduction of contraceptives. They made finally possible a very large number of lifestyles that are making some people very happy. And I’m not talking about hedonists and sexual deviants; I’m referring to childless couples, or couples that just want one or two children, or couples that want children later in their lives. I see no reason whatsoever to suppose that there is only one possible path of living for a married couple that want to have sex, that Catholicism implies.

Laura writes:

 Bruno writes, “Well, I believe that it is a very personal matter.”

If he means it is a very personal matter in the sense that the decision to use contraception is entirely up to the persons involved, then he is correct. It is in that sense entirely personal. And, there is not one possible path. If there were, we wouldn’t be talking about this. As in every moral issue, there is more than one possible path. That is the beauty of it, that we freely choose.

In other senses, the decision to use contraception is not personal at all. On a purely worldly level, the use of contraception has immediate and indirect effects on others. It affects how many siblings one’s children will have, what kind of neighborhood one will create, how many grandchildren one’s parents will have, what kind of society one will help to create, and the lives of the people who will someday interact with one’s offspring. We do have duties to the next generation and one of them is to provide them with a generation. A culture is not transmitted if there are relatively few to transmit it too. An economy thrives on consumers, on people.

On a transcendent level, we do not produce human beings ourselves. Procreation is not simply biological. If one views the creation of every human being as inherently good and if one recognizes the purposes of God in creating human life then one has the duty to use this gift well. It boils down to that: whether one believes that the creation of even the lowest, most unimpressive of human beings is a good thing or not and whether one believes that the love of God is superior to all other forms of happiness.

By the way, there is no such thing as an “outlaw” in Christian theology if Bruno means by an “outlaw” someone who is beyond redemption or unworthy of love.

Laura continues:

I would like to get back to Bruno’s point about the trip to Paris because I think it is important. Given that we already live in a culture that has become sterile in more than one sense and unimaginative, due in no small part to infertility and demographic decline, people don’t know of the simple pleasures anymore. They think it is only possible to have a great time if one is spending a lot of money or doing something novel, especially travel. Marketing, of course, is a major factor in this.

I don’t mean to dismiss the great difficulties and sacrifices in having children. If one believes that personal happiness is the highest goal in life, then having children and foregoing things like trips to Paris is even more difficult because one can’t make sense of the hard work involved.

But there are many simple pleasures to be had with a houseful of children that are arguably superior to any experience in Paris.

Bruno writes:

As you said, “If one believes that personal happiness is the highest goal in life…” That “if” settles the question for me. It is up to every person to decide for him or herself what his or her goals in life are going to be. Again, personally, I do consider the Catholic claim to universality and moral teaching for all to be quite pretentious and mistaken, but, since it is not enforced by the law, I do not really care about it. I say that contraceptives are to be praised because they enabled people that do not want and never wanted to live by the canons of the Catholic church and other Christian churches to do so, in practice, and freely. That is a liberty worth defending, in my opinion; as much as the liberty to behave and live in a strictly Christian fashion also is.

Laura writes:

The person who does not believe in objective morality – and by objective morality I don’t mean something clear and concrete in the way that an atom is clear and concrete – will always consider the claim to objective morality pretentious. But, I’m sure that Bruno does believe in objective right and wrong. I’m sure he does believe in it with certain issues. For instance, I’m sure he believes murder is wrong and theft is wrong (although even in murder and theft, there are grey areas.) But on this issue of procreation, of determining whether human beings will live or not, he believes it is an entirely personal matter, even though there is no single human activity that more directly affects another person. After all, creating another person ultimately has nothing to do with a man and a woman, a mother and a father, and everything to do with that person created, making it in that sense the most impersonal and other-directed thing we do, making it something that has nothing to do with ourselves.

But leaving aside the pretentiousness and oppressiveness of Catholic morality, which have not stopped the vast majority of “Catholics” from using contraception, I would like to draw attention once again to what Bruno is saying.

He is saying that a trip to Paris or a luxury home or plastic surgery or a new car is superior to a human life or several human lives. I can understand someone saying, “I am not up to this. I am not good enough.” But I can’t understand someone saying the creation of life is not good in relation to a trip to Paris without being conscious of his own vanity and shallowness. I can’t understand someone saying, “Well, it would have been fine if my parents had preferred a trip to Paris over me.” Remember, a single life multiplies. It leads to other lives, or can lead to other lives. A person with five children may very well have 25 grandchildren and 125 great grandchildren. But Bruno believes the creation of dozens of people is inferior to evanescent pleasures such as a trip to Paris.

Kimberly writes:

Mary says:

“We once understood as a society that marriage calls us to be co-creators with our Creator: that was our gift from God and our enticement to procreate within the bounds of marriage, for the sake of children produced and the human race as a whole.”

And then Bruno says:

“Reading between the lines, Catholicism (and Christianity in general, in fact) is at minimum very harsh doctrine, at least by the common standards of my twenty-something generation.”

The problem here is that Bruno is only reading between the lines, along with most of the rest of my generation. The majority of us twenty-somethings don’t know how to read the actual lines themselves, and it’s probably because our world has been one wholly saturated with the filth that contraception has brought along.

When relationships are entirely based on sex, and not sex that is “open to life,” the fullness of the experience cannot be understood. It is, as Bruno describes, only reading between the lines, and can be compared with looking through a slatted fence at the real deal, and never getting any closer to experiencing it. Without this key factor of a will to accept new life, this possibility of there being a higher purpose to the act, then the sex is lustful ; when God is taken out of the act as the purifying presence, then sex goes from being a heavenly, diamond-like experience to a dark, lonely, unholy act, where our mortality can be felt. It’s a miserable feeling, with a stench, I’d even say. Who wants to feel death’s presence while experiencing what was meant to be “the marital embrace”? I’ll tell you; it’s those who do not know good from evil well enough, and have not the sense to pinpoint the problem, but they feel it. It doesn’t leave once the act is over. It scrapes and picks away at one’s confidence.

Our confidence rests entirely on our conscience. It doesn’t matter how beautiful you are, how talented or strong or powerful… no. The more clear a conscience is, the more capable of confidence it is. Confidence is most attractive, and it is a most valuable piece of the marital embrace, and a person engaging in a mortal sin is not capable of true confidence for this reason. They may get used to it, and learn to bury their insecurities, to distract themselves and enjoy the moment, but they are not confident, and as this goes on, they only continue to lose what confidence their conscience afforded them to begin with.

What is harsh is telling people they’ll be happy if they selfishly, foolishly, stubbornly ignore the FACT that sex could, might, has and always will possibly create a baby! No matter what you try to do to stop it, there is always that chance, and putting yourself in the mindset that you’ve decreased the odds so you’re willing to have sex is an evil way to think. Who wants to be the child that was not wanted? Who wants to be the aborted one? Who has the right to put their own “sex life” as a higher priority to the entire life of another?

Mary writes:

Bruno said: “That’s why I praise the introduction of contraceptives. They made finally possible a very large number of lifestyles that are making some people very happy….”

How does someone who feels as Bruno does, and there are legions, explain away the fact that there has never been a nation more sexually dissatisfied, malcontent and ornery than the one we currently live in?

We are completely dependent on outside help for our sex lives for the first time in history. Our entertainment culture, from books to radio, TV and movies and right down to the advertising, provides constant stimulation and cannot hold our attention unless it is loaded up with a range of sexual references from innuendo to borderline pornography. Our men’s and women’s magazines are full of tips and advice toward greater satisfaction, indicating that many readers feel there is room for improvement.

The pharmaceutical industry has helped us to defy nature further with drugs to prolong our sex lives (because apparently we hadn’t had enough sex when we were in our primes). For the first time in history our children actually need to receive instruction on sexual matters in school (I guess our parents and grandparents instinct in these matters didn’t get passed along to their progeny).

Millions are addicted to porn, are daily users. Millions. And with all the contraception available something like 40 percent of babies are born out of wedlock. Marriage itself is in tatters – how else could it be explained that men who want to marry men could be taken seriously and are having laws created supporting this objectively preposterous suggestion? Even the Vermont Country Store catalog has been tainted: it came in the mail a few years back… with pages of “marital aids” included. The. Vermont. Country. Store.

It is obvious we are profoundly dissatisfied and discontent as a people – call it sexual ennui. I don’t believe there has ever been a time of more profound private suffering than now; it’s invisible so we can ignore it, but it’s very grave and dangerous because of its invisibility. We just take our pills and watch American Idol, or grab a hamburger or sleep in our new sheets and we are temporarily soothed. It’s suffering that results from the terrible misuse of something that should have remained private, and is now public in the most crass and offensive way; but since it should have remained private so when we suffer we suffer alone.

We ignore the immense inward suffering of today at our peril: we are brazenly defying the most meaningful and significant and fundamental things in human experience; never before have we trivialized, all at once, the beautiful bonding act that ensures the continuation of the human life, the bonding relationship that protects this human life and guarantees the success of a civilization, and human life itself.

But I am old enough to be Bruno’s mother; perhaps he just doesn’t see the kind of suffering I speak of, and sees a narrowing of options as the greatest curse one could endure. Perhaps I also felt that way in my twenties. I wonder what will happen to the young people of these last few generations – young people for whom families are often broken; for whom wholesomeness has been made ridiculous, especially wholesome romantic inclinations; who have received sexual initiation/instruction in a public setting from a stranger, permanently destroying the sense of lovely privacy they that was their right to expect from intimate relations; and for whom friendship can start and end with the click of a mouse.

Laura writes:

Bravo, Mary! Bravo!

A river of tears runs through our culture.

Josh F. writes:

My stance on those like Bruno is that they should get no voice at the  table for the very fact that they are fundamentally self-annihilators.

When one thinks about contraception and abortion AND the “belief” in  such things, those of us that reject these things must alter the  radically liberal paradigm.

First, we must acknowledge the self-annihilators amongst us and our  relative powerlessness in stopping these particular individual from self-annihilating. We are mainly concerned with denying the self-annihilators a public voice used to spread their self-annihilating ways. This leads us to our most viable option in a radically “free”  society.

We must identify the self-annihilators. The “believer” in “abortion”  is by far the easiest to recognize and the most numerous of the self- annihilators. The “believer” in “abortion” is both the creator (mother) and the created (son/daughter) and both are saying some very  disturbing things. The mother asserts her “fundamental right” to kill  any of her children in utero and the son is asserting that his  mother had a “fundamental right” to kill him in utero, And if his mother would have kill her son in utero, it would have been  a GOOD THING as she was exercising her “fundamental right.” This is  the very essence of the self-annihilating mentality. This is a very  sick and dysfunctional “relationship.” These type of individuals AND  union of individuals (mothers/sons, mothers/daughters) need to be seen  for what they are and should be shunned, mocked, castigated,  marginalized, ridiculed and alienated into submission.

That’s all we really need to do. No need to destroy liberalism, just  submit and subordinate it. It will destroy itself unless it relents. Submit and subordinate the self-annihilator or he just self-annihilates anyway. We just don’t want his infection.

David S. writes:

Laura wrote: “For that trip to Paris, a couple may deny their children of siblings. That is a very harsh thing to do.”

First of all, what if the couple has no children at all? Then they’re not depriving anyone of anything, except themselves of children, which is their choice. And even if they have one or two children, who’s to say if three or four would have been better for the lives of those one or two? This is certainly not guaranteed.

“But I can’t understand someone saying the creation of life is not good in relation to a trip to Paris without being conscious of his own vanity and shallowness.”

They’re saying it’s not good for them. That doesn’t mean they’re denigrating those others who choose to do it. I don’t see anything vain or shallow in that.

“I can’t understand someone saying, “Well, it would have been fine if my parents had preferred a trip to Paris over me.””

Really? You can’t understand it? It’s pretty simple.

Any rational person would say: The world could have been different. I might have never been born, or even conceived, for various reasons. In such a world, there would be no pain for me, or any other unpleasantries, since I wouldn’t even exist. It goes without saying that there would be no injustice visited upon me in that world. So indeed, that world would have been “fine,” at least as far as I’m concerned.

Laura writes:

I cannot argue with David’s nihilism. It’s too entrenched. The demographic decline that is well upon us speaks for itself.

A person who believes human suffering has no meaning will never agree that each life is necessary and good. He will tend to see the human being as just another consumer good.

Kimberly writes:

Laura said:

“I have to laugh at Bruno’s outrage though that a young couple may miss out on a trip to Paris. C’mon. Paris is a great city, but it doesn’t really compare to the rewards and adventures of bringing human beings into the world and raising them.”

I turn 26 this month. I have three little ones. I would not trade even one of them for all the money, trips to Paris, fancy cars or houses in the entire world. It is clear that each of these little personalities was tailor-made, by God, to help my husband and myself become better people. I would regret it eternally if I had negated their existence so I could go to Paris with my husband alone, even if it was for a whole year.

I am certain that my attitude is different from the attitudes of my “stuck with kids” peers because of the guidance of the Catholic Church. I have been aware of the Church’s stance on birth control since childhood. When I heard it then I couldn’t understand why everyone got so angry about it, and here I am, a young adult, still finding it hard to understand. Babies are precious. Just yesterday, my one-year-old flopped himself, fully dressed, into the bathtub with his older brother, and my husband and I laughed for a good hour about it, and took loads of photos. It was one of the cutest things that either of us has ever seen, and we could give a damn about the Eiffel Tower next to that.

It takes longer for men to appreciate babies then it takes women, in general. Bishop Sheen said, “Women marry so that they can have children. Men marry so they can have a wife”. Knowing this has been helpful to me in easing my husband into fatherhood. I think that Ecological Breastfeeding, the non-systematic form of NFP, which is actually quite ancient and natural, has been instrumental in this.

For example, I am as thin and fit as I have ever been in my entire life, because breastfeeding keeps me that way. I lose all my pregnancy weight within just a few months, eating as much as I want, although I do have to avoid sugar or I’ll have a gassy baby. Breastfeeding also makes for stronger, smarter, milky-skinned babies, and because they are so attractive, my husband would rather have a beautiful wife and beautiful babies, and not just a wife alone.

Mary writes:

David S. wrote: “First of all, what if the couple has no children at all? Then they’re not depriving anyone of anything, except themselves of children, which is their choice…” 

So deciding that other married people will be responsible for populating civilization while you travel is not selfish? David S. apparently doesn’t understand that if everyone made this decision the human race would simply end. It boggles the mind. 

To assume it will never happen just because we haven’t heard about it in America would be a mistake. To see what happens when people decide to stop having children or to severely limit family size, look no farther than Western Europe. Germany, France and Italy are practically flatlined; they are barely replacing their populations. It is my understanding that Germany may soon enter a downward spiral from which they fear they may never recover, and they are starting to panic. Russia is already in a panic; I believe they are now offering financial incentives to women to have babies (in or out of wedlock) to help grow the population (they have more abortions than babies there). A few years back, France honored mothers of big families – in the accompanying newspaper photo, 4 of the 5 mothers honored were Muslim. 

Let’s look at China’s interest in the individual’s personal freedom and happiness. This is a story of reproductive freedom turned on it’s ear. They have dictated to families a one-child policy, and then it’s government-enforced abortion for you if your contraception fails (I read recently that they are considering upping the number of children to two, as they are having population-replacement problems as well). In an ironic twist, many Chinese, who apparently as a culture favor male children, have decided that if they are only going to have one child, it’s going to be a boy. This they ensure through sex-selection by aborting many more baby girls than boys. This is done to such a degree that it has actually changed the natural ratio of male to female in China, with results yet to be seen but offering very little hope of a good outcome. A women’s right to choose, indeed. 

There have to be – and there always have been up until recently – social standards, based on the natural order, upon which strong societies thrive. One of these is that marriage is established for procreation; this has been strengthened over the centuries by Christianity and by government, but in fact it predates both. It is an objective good by any and all standards. As such, we are required to take part in it as responsible members of our society. Many of the same people who would scorn those who fail to recycle their bottles and cans cannot see this. That is perhaps the greatest failing of all in this great advanced society in which we live.

Alissa writes:

Bruno wrote: 

Well, I believe that it is a very personal matter. 

Not at all. Man is not an island. Society is interconnected and what happens in the private realm affects the public realm to an extent. When it comes to the issue of contraception, procreation will always be superior compared to evilness of sex as recreative activity. The wages of sin is death. Satan himself dresses up as an angel of light deceiving many.

Kimberly continues:

I understand what Mary means by this suffering being invisible, and I am grateful to her for pointing out how grave and dangerous it is, but at the same time, it is not entirely invisible. As she already explained, millions of people are addicted to pornography, and while we may not see them at the time they are viewing this poison, it creates a distinct air. As a young person that has been in the midst of that “profound suffering” from impurity, and has broken free of it, I can see this distinction, this creepy, awful air. I have been enslaved by that demon and I recognize, hate and shun it with every encounter. It’s a certain misery, accompanied by a laziness and something crude. It starts out subtle but is anxious to grow. I’m not to saying I hate the people it ensnares. I have a deep pity for them. But I don’t allow that pity to keep me hanging around that demon any more than I have to, and I’ve even lost dear old friends because they kept trying to bring the demon around.

Don’t let yourselves believe that it’s invisible, even if you cannot detect it as readily as I can. Be on your guard. Do NOT ignore it. I wish that all the adults I knew sensed the demon in me as a young girl and had not chosen to ignore it. I understand why they didn’t want to pay attention to it- shudder. But it was certainly a lack of charity to allow a fourteen-year-old girl to battle such a beast on her own. It’s obvious that Mary is not the type to ignore this demon, but I am speaking to all of those who took comfort in those words, feeling justified in having ignored their internal warning of the demon of lust’s presence because “it’s invisible.” There is no longer any justification in this excuse. We have all been exposed to it well enough to recognize it to some degree, and I say, pay attention. Heed Mary’s warning of it’s gravity and danger.

[THE DISCUSSION CONTINUES HERE.]

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