Contraception Birth Control & the Unborn
RUSSIA: NATIONAL DAY OF CONCEPTION AND PROCREATION
DECLARED TO FIGHT DEMOGRAPHIC DECLINE
14/08/07 13:12 Permalink
The lengths that certain nations will go to in order to persuade their citizenry to discard their birth control, and cooperate with natural law is growing more bizarre everyday, and is beginning to sound like something out of a science-fiction novel.
"Alexei Bezrukov and his wife, Yulia, won a 250,000 ruble (US$10,000, €7,316) cash prize in June after she gave birth to a baby boy, Andrei. Bezrukov said patriotism wasn't their motive for having a child, their third, although the money was welcome."
"Russia, with one-seventh of the Earth's land surface, has just 141.4 million citizens, making it one of the most sparsely settled countries in the world. Due to a low birthrate and very high death rate, the population has been shrinking since the early 1990s.
"It is now falling by almost half a percent each year. Demographic experts expect the decline to accelerate, estimating that Russia's population could fall below 100 million by 2050.
"In his state of the nation address last year, President Vladimir Putin called the demographic crisis the most acute problem facing Russia and announced a broad effort to boost Russia's birthrate, including cash incentives to families to have more than one child.
"Since the campaign began, the birthrate in the region has risen steadily and is up 4.5 percent so far this year over the same period in 2006, according to the regional administration's Web site.
"Everyone who has a baby in an Ulyanovsk hospital on Russia Day gets some kind of prize. But the grand prize winners are couples judged to be the fittest parents by a committee that deliberates for two weeks over the selection.
"The 2007 grand prize went to Irina and Andrei Kartuzov, who received a UAZ-Patriot, an SUV made in Ulyanovsk. They told reporters they were planning to have another child anyway when they heard about the contest.
"The selection committee chose the Kartuzovs from among the 78 couples because of their "respectability" and "commendable parenting" of their two older children, a spokesman for the governor said.
"Other contestants won video cameras, TVs, refrigerators and washing machines.
"Under the federal program, women who give birth to a second or subsequent child are to receive certificates worth 250,000 rubles, which can be used to pay for education or to improve the family's living conditions.
"Monthly support payments were raised this year to 1,500 rubles (US$60) from 700 rubles (US$28)."
Excerpts from International Herald Tribune
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NONPARTICIPATORY CHRISTIANITY: DENYING THE CROSS
INSTEAD OF DENYING ONESELF
11/08/07 15:50 Permalink
This past weekend a non-Catholic relative informed me that since her husband refused to have a vasectomy she was going to get "fixed". Never mind that you cannot fix something that is not broken, and that fertility is not a disease to be surgically removed--I will not digress into this realm today. We had a long discussion about artificial contraception and I ended up giving her an armload of books and pamphlets in an attempt to convince her of the evil of artificial contraception.
She stated over and over that she was happy with her two children and did not WANT more. When I spoke of the cross of Christ and how we must take it up to be His follower -she stated that she was living life "abundantly" and was "all about grace". She said we aren't supposed to make ourselves miserable here and that God wants us to be happy. Is this truly what God wants of His followers?
"...and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me." Matthew 10:38
"Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Matthew 16:24
"Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Mark 8:34
"Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." Luke 9:23
"And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:27
Based upon the above, Jesus Christ made it abundantly clear that what He desires from us is our entire selves. Christian joy and true happiness proceeds from our embrace of His Cross and doing His will instead of ours. Happiness that proceeds from doing our own thing is merely temporal wordly happiness.
I have heard the condemnation of Christ's Cross repeatedly by Protestants and liberal Catholics who want to banish it in favor of an empty cross. But an empty cross breeds an empty Christianity. This non-participatory view of Christianity is no less than diabolical, and fools so many into believing that they need do nothing but say a "sinners prayer" to be saved by Jesus. This same crowd condemns good works and even the "legalism" contained in the 10 commandments as a rejection of the sufficiency of Christ's Cross.
These so called followers of Christ not only refuse to look upon a crucifix, but they refuse to embrace the Cross in their own personal lives. What is the point of having a "personal relationship with Jesus" when one rejects His will. Any orthodox follower of Jesus will attest that embracing the Cross of Christ has brought them closer to Jesus.
One who takes up his cross has a more complete understanding of grace than one who seeks his own will above God's. Needless to say-- but I suppose in this day and age it needs to be said--carrying one's cross and following the will of God cannot be done without the grace of God. No Catholic who knew his faith would make such a claim.
Unfortunately, there is no Cross literally and spiritually, in the Disney-fied, non-denominational, mega-church Christianity. There is no Cross in the modern over-fed, over-entertained, over-spending modern American family. How can Christ's words penetrate a person who lives for this world? Over and over we fail to sacrifice those things which Christ asks of us--like truly committing to our spouse in good times and bad, and having another child. Instead we engage in pseudo-sacrifices by sacrificing our children and our marriages to our own selfish desires so that we can worship at the altar of career or greed.
It is certainly easy to say "I am all about grace" and "I'm not into the Cross" when one chooses the broad road, and dodges the hand of God in our lives through pills, implanted devices, and surgeries that prevent the birth of children.
"He that seeks not the Cross of Christ, seeks not the glory of Christ." St John of the Cross.
"...[T]herefore in like manner the apostle says: "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God." (Rom 12:1) This cross, therefore, in which the servant of God is not only not confounded but even glories in the words : "God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world." (Gal 6:14), this Cross, I say, is not merely for forty days but for the whole of this life." St Augustine, (5th cent)
ELIMINATING MEXICANS--CULTURAL IMPERIALISM AND THE
SPREAD OF THE CULTURE OF DEATH
24/06/07 19:13 Permalink
A U.S. Republican congressman has proposed using condoms to halt immigration of Mexicans into the United States.
"[A] slower rate of growth would...reduce the long-term illegal immigration pressure on America's borders," reasoned Rep. Mark Kirk, who also supports stronger border security in the short-term."
Kirk made the statement during a heated debate in the House of Representatives over whether the US government should be allowed to donate condoms and other contraceptives to foreign family planning agencies.
This was proposed as Mexican birth rates are already in steep decline:
"[F]ertility rates have plunged in Mexico since 1980, when an average couple would have five or more children. Now, the country's fertility rate has dropped to 2.5 children, compared to 2.1 for the United States, according to United Nations data."
In its revisionist view of religion and world history, the left condemns the West as imperialistic, and insensitive to indigenous cultures. But the left fails to see its own modern-day ascendancy and imperialism. From the inane and destructive pop culture that is spread all over the world, to the contraceptives and abortions that are forced on impoverished nations-- the effect is the spread of the culture of death and sin. The fruits of this modern Western culture spell destruction of the family, and demographic doom for nations. Nevertheless, the promoters of the culture of death and sin fail to see that it is precisely this imperialism that has brought on the hatred of so many nations and removed God's blessings from our land.
Excerpts were taken from Stuff.co.nz
ONE NATION SEES LIBERATION AS STERILITY--ANOTHER AS
FERTILITY
23/05/07 13:15 Permalink
On one side of the globe we have the FDA approval of yet another contraceptive pill called Lybrel--- an admitted take off on the word "liberty". This new sterility pill is seen as further liberating women by not only preventing pregnancy but also eradicating menstration.
On the other side of the globe we have the Chinese rioting over forced pregnancy testing, forced abortions, forced sterility and the lack of freedom to procreate. One nation sees liberation as sterility, another as fertility. One revels in sterility the other fights to death if necessary for the God given right to procreate.
Lybrel is not synonomous with liberty--despite what its makers and many women may believe. Any Chinese woman of child bearing age could attest to the lack of liberty that has been brought about under the government's forced one-child policy. Rather Lybrel and all other methods of artificial contraception pervert liberty, further enslave the West in sin, and spell demographic doom.
True liberty consists in doing what is in accordance with natural law and God's commands. Dispensing with the natural law and God's commands can never bring about liberty but only fosters license. License is a heedlessness for the precepts of proper behavior. It is an excessive and unrestrained freedom that allows or is used with irresponsibility. Prevention of pregnancy by artificial means is unnatural and contrary to the laws of nature and God's commands and thus robs humanity of liberty. “When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near” Will Durant. "[L]iberty will ever be more free and secure in proportion as license is kept in fuller restraint." Pope Leo XIII. An old french proverb says: "liberty has no greater enemy than license". The freedom to sin is mere license and cannot be equated with true liberty.
Here is a little more on the topic from Pope Leo XIII's encyclical-- Libertas:
"Having a false and absurd notion as to what liberty is, either they pervert the very idea of freedom, or they extend it at their pleasure to many things in respect of which man cannot rightly be regarded as free." ..."But many there are who follow in the footsteps of Lucifer, and adopt as their own his rebellious cry, "I will not serve"; and consequently substitute for true liberty what is sheer and most foolish license. Such, for instance, are the men belonging to that widely spread and powerful organization, who, usurping the name of liberty, style themselves liberals.
"Hence, these followers of liberalism deny the existence of any divine authority to which obedience is due, and proclaim that every man is the law to himself; from which arises that ethical system which they style independent morality, and which, under the guise of liberty, exonerates man from any obedience to the commands of God, and substitutes a boundless license. The end of all this it is not difficult to foresee, especially when society is in question. For, when once man is firmly persuaded that he is subject to no one, it follows that the efficient cause of the unity of civil society is not to be sought in any principle external to man, or superior to him, but simply in the free will of individuals; that the authority in the State comes from the people only; and that, just as every man's individual reason is his only rule of life, so the collective reason of the community should be the supreme guide in the management of all public affairs. Hence the doctrine of the supremacy of the greater number, and that all right and all duty reside in the majority.
"For, to reject the supreme authority to God, and to cast off all obedience to Him in public matters, or even in private and domestic affairs, is the greatest perversion of liberty and the worst kind of liberalism; and what We have said must be understood to apply to this alone in its fullest sense." Pope Leo XIII 1888
BIRTH CONTROL POLLUTING THE SOUL --AND THE
ENVIRONMENT?
01/05/07 10:50 Permalink
Millions of women in the United States ingest excess estrogen every day in the form of birth control pills. Within 24 hours, the effluent from those 12 million doses ends up in our sewage systems. And then?
The April 17 Scientific American reported results of a study warning that “many streams, rivers and lakes already bear warning signs that the fish caught within them may also be carrying enough chemicals that mimic the female hormone estrogen to cause breast cancer cells to grow.”
“Fish are really a sentinel, just like canaries in the coal mine 100 years ago,” says Conrad Volz, co-director of exposure assessment at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute's Center for Environmental Ecology. “We need to pay attention to chemicals that are estrogenic in nature, because they find their way back into the water we all use.”
According to the Freshwater Institute’s Fisheries and Oceans section, “The potent synthetic estrogens excreted by women taking hormone replacement therapy or birth control pills are not completely broken down in the sewage treatment process and are discharged into waterways.”
While cautioning that the exact process of hormonal confusion is not yet clear, the Scientific American article continued, “But the [estrogenic] effects on the fish themselves were clear: the gender of nine of the fish [tested] could not be determined.”
“Increased estrogenic active substances in the water are changing males so that they are indistinguishable from females,” Volz found. “There are eggs in male gonads as well as males are secreting a yolk sac protein. Males aren't supposed to be making egg stuff.”