Parenthood and the Path to Perfection

 

KEVIN STAY writes:

In much of the recent discussion on contraception and children, contributors mention the idea of happiness. Many today are misled down dead end paths in its pursuit.

I do not know how to better state this without sounding unduly Eastern and metaphysical, so forgive that in advance. But the beginning steps on the path to true and enduring happiness require certain realizations. First, we are in fact the children of a Creator every bit as real as you and I. Second, one of the primary goals of the Creator is that each of us receive a full measure of joy/happiness. Third, all of existence is described and governed by laws and rules. (We have at best a very limited understanding of those laws and rules.) So, given those three things how do we best go about finding real happiness? (more…)

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The American University: Citadel of Casual Barbarism

 

ACCORDING to the Associated Press:

Students at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania can get the “morning-after” pill by sliding $25 into a vending machine, an idea that has drawn the attention of federal regulators and raised questions about how accessible emergency contraception should be. [emphasis added] [OH MY, QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN RAISED!!]

(more…)

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Islands of Fertility in an Ocean of Demographic Decline

 

THE NATIONWIDE INCREASE IN FERTILE CENSUS TRACTS

By Jesse Powell

A traditionalist or patriarchal subculture is growing throughout the United States among all religious groupings (and presumably among people more secular in orientation as well). This is what a close analysis of the 2000 Census and the 2010 Census reveals. To support this claim I look at what I will call Fertile Intact Census Tracts (FICTs). A FICT is defined as a census tract with more than 2.5 children per married couple that has children, a greater than 90% Married Parents Ratio (MPR), and more than 500 children in the census tract (all these measures are applied to the white Non-Hispanic population only). A FICT census tract has high fertility, a high proportion of intact families, and a big enough population to prove the positive indicators are not an accident but truly represent the character of the neighborhood. FICTs can be assumed to be highly religious census tracts; an upper class neighborhood might have a high MPR but it is unlikely to have a high fertility rate. A neighborhood with both intact families and a high fertility rate is a marker of religious influence.

Neighborhoods that are merely upper class are declining throughout the nation; they are declining in terms of their white child population and in terms of their white MPR. (more…)

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Exhibit B

 

faith and grace feb. 2012 021

ANOTHER READER sends proof of her failure to use contraception. Her daughter was born just over a week ago.

When contraception is widely available, when it is embraced as normal, when births are planned and scheduled, when deliberation replaces surrender, when convenience replaces hardship and struggle, every child seems like a choice, the product of human will and desire. This delusion represents immense hubris. No child is chosen. What is chosen in this face? It’s a gift too good to be true.

(more…)

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More on Child Abuse in the Local Library

 

LAUREN writes: 

I am a mother of two small children. We visit the library weekly, having to walk past the adult computer terminals to access the children’s section. 
 
I just called my library in light of your recent post. The librarian told me that freedom of speech prevents the library from filtering the websites that the library patrons can access. She said in her 16 years of working there, that there have been some incidents of patrons viewing pornography, but that those patrons were told to stop or leave if the screen was in view of others. (more…)

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On the Hedonist Who Profits From the Sacrifices of Those Who Raise Children

  

JAMES P. writes:

Bruno claims that Catholicism is a “very harsh doctrine” because it requires that one sacrifice materialistic pleasures like buying a new car or new home or taking a vacation in order to have children. Even if one accepts the argument that the requirement to procreate and raise children is “very harsh” (though humans throughout history have somehow happily done this), what exactly is the point of belonging to a Church that makes no demands on its members? If all you want to do is what makes you happy, why belong to a Church at all? No doubt Bruno will respond that this is exactly why he does not belong to a Church. However, he appears blissfully unaware of the numerous moral and practical objections to his philosophy of selfish hedonism.

(more…)

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The Hypocrisy of Catholic Objections to Obama’s Latest Ruling

 

MANY CATHOLICS encountered official outrage at church yesterday over Obama’s recent ruling that under his healthcare plan, Catholic hospitals must include coverage for contraception and abortion-inducing drugs in their health plans for employees.

As Christopher Badeaux argues at RedState, this outrage on the part of America’s bishops is in many cases highly hypocritical.

Where were the bishops and pastoral leaders when Obamacare was proposed or when Obama, a candidate who clearly supported abortion, was running for president? Better yet, where have the bishops been for years while Catholic politicians who openly supported abortion received communion, as have those who admitted to voting for them? (more…)

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Breastfeeding: The Wholistic Contraceptive

 

KIMBERLY writes:

My parish priest brought up this topic of contraception today, in the aftermath of Obama’s ruling that Catholic hospitals must now subsidize contraception and abortion in their health insurance plans. He’s such a good priest and I’m sure he has nothing but the best intentions, but he said something that was annoying to me.
 
He said, “Why would the government ask us to use money for contraceptives rather than use the money to pay for formula for babies?” And as you know, that was quite the wrong thing to say, because our government already supplies 53 percent of our country’s formula through WIC. We certainly don’t need to waste any more money doing that. How about spending some of that money on breastfeeding consultants? But that apparently did not dawn on this highly gifted priest, and to me, that says a lot.
 
Breastfeeding, or the lack-there-of, is entirely connected to the contraceptive issue. I wonder how closely the pill followed the bottle, or the bottle the pill.

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Porn and “Intellectual” Freedom

 

IN RESPONSE to complaints by Seattle area parents that their children are being exposed to hard core porn when they walk by library computers,  Barbara Jones, director of the American Library Association’s intellectual freedom office, said last week, “Sometimes, in a library, you’re going to see information that’s going to make you uncomfortable.”

The freedom of an adult to do anything he desires is more important to our morally-stupefied elites than the freedom of a child to visit a public library and return home with his innocence intact.

According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, one mother’s ten-year-old daughter was reduced to tears and unable to sleep after viewing violent sex while walking past a library computer in use by an adult patron. The woman was told by a librarian “the library is a public space; it’s more like a bus stop than a safe haven.”

(more…)

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Exhibit A

  A READER sent this proof of her own failure to use contraception.

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Contraception and the Culture War, Cont.

 

JOHN PURDY writes:

First let me thank you and your participants for some very fine, well-argued writing in the post “Contraception and the Culture War.”

Speaking as someone who, regrettably, was never able to have children (though not for wont of trying) I have a hunch that, as society ages, we’re going to see a lot of rather sad and despondent seniors. I, myself, will most likely die alone and have very few people at my funeral. I feel cheated out of something. I, of course, took many actions myself but rejecting marriage and family, after I had grown up a bit, was never one of them. (more…)

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Comments

  I HAVE quite a few comments, many of them excellent, regarding the recent post, "Contraception and the Culture War." I will be posting them over the course of the next few hours.

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Contraception and the Culture War


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…”  (more…)

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Kiryas Joel

  SEE the ongoing discussion in this entry of the Orthodox Jewish community of Kiryas Joel, where families are large and less than 50 percent of the working age men are employed.

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The Girl Scouts Celebrate Women in Politics

  NANCY PELOSI spoke warmly yesterday of the official relationship between Planned Parenthood and the now thoroughly leftwing Girl Scouts of America. According to our top female elected leader, an organization that supports abortion, rough sex and masturbation is just fine for little girls.  Remember the dizzying hopes of the suffragettes? They foolishly argued that the entry of women into politics would make for better mothers. What a delusion. Women who believe women should lead the world are enemies of motherly love and destroyers of girlhood innocence.

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