The Depressing Truth About The Pill
From the Spectator…
The Pill has been linked to depression. Why isn’t this more of a scandal?
Because it is a sin to suggest that oral contraceptives may not be the greatest gift ever given to womankind
A study came out last week that should have caused great alarm. For 13 years, researchers at the University of Copenhagen studied more than a million women between the ages of 15 and 34 who were taking a type of drug — one that is popular in all developed countries. Taking this drug, the researchers found, correlated with an increase in the risk of depression. The correlation was particularly strong in adolescent girls, who showed an 80 per cent higher chance of being diagnosed with depression.
Usually when a story about women’s health and depression breaks, a phalanx of activists and campaigners pop up all over the media to ‘raise awareness’ of the issue. Last week, however, barely a peep — the papers carried the story and a few online sites ran delicately objective surveys of women on the pill, but there were few howls of outrage. Read more here
Comment:
Perhaps the many Catholic women who have, sadly, opted to defy God’s natural moral law and take these dangerous pills will realise the error of their ways, repent, and turn away from this sin once and for all. Or are they more likely to continue on, with reckless disregard for their health – both mental and physical?
Comments (40)
Women using the pill won’t give it up, IMHO, even if they found out about this study.
That’s partly because their priests and the bishops are not teaching any more than contraception is a mortal sin.
Also because like most activities with health risks, those partaking think that the bad thing might happen to others but it won’t happen to them.
I don’t know about the the pill as such but I’ve heard of an implant, i.e. under the skin which prevents pregnancy for up to 2 years. Imagine what that’d do to the body? Madness.
The article says the World Health Organization classes the Pill as a carcinogen on the same level as asbestos…..
I have seen the lengths they go to to remove asbestos on oil rigs and other industrial sites….workers in sealed overalls and full face masks with filters to stop breathing in particles work inside sealed tents with fresh air pumped in and contaminated air filtered out by other pumps…..if one were to pick up a particle of dust and ingest it you would be instantly dismissed and carted off to the funny farm as a danger to yourself and your co workers….
Yet school nurses can dish out pills freely….with the consent of the parents…???…I’d doubt that.
Feminazi Wymyn “journalists” on all the major media outlets all gush about the benefits of this poison for the last 50 years and more…..
Yet as “the man” said there is no such thing as a free lunch…and…if it looks too good to be true…. it ain’t …..
Lesson for the… “grrllzz”…..
Always listen to….”the man”…
You’d need a heart of stone not to break out a wry smile…..
And yet the WHO (a branch of the UN) promotes contraception as an essential part of the New World Order cultural scheme (along with abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, and every other deviant behavior known to Satan). Shouldn’t there be an “OOPS!” moment here?
It has also been long suspected that the pill causes thrombosis in the legs and is linked to breast cancer. But it doesn’t stop them!!
Athanasius,
It is truly horrific. I think pride and lust are blinding though. These women who take the pill only care about so-called freedom. In actual fact, they have become slaves to the devil.
Crouchback, who are you callong gorillas?
Christina,
Don’t even TRY to make sense of Crouchback’s comments. He’s comes on from time to time (and to be fair it was he who alerted me to the Spectator report) and I have long since given up trying to decipher The Crouchback Code 😀
But we love him all the same!
At Catholic Marriage Ceremonies, the priest will ask this of the couple….’will you accept children as a gift from God?’…..’we will’…is the bog-standard smiling response.
One would reasonably conclude here that the Church is confirming Her teaching re the purpose of marriage i.e. to beget children and, of course, to raise them in the Catholic Faith.
It could be argued that to use NFR (natural fertility regulation) throughout the bride’s fertile years, in order to avoid conception, would render the above vow taken before God to be in-valid, i.e. one that the couple didn’t really intend to keep. But I would have deemed this to be the ‘lesser of two evils’ when the damage inflicted by the ‘Pill’ is considered. Regular bloggers, what’s your ‘take’ on this one?
Pat,
It is very clear that the moral teaching of the Church (i.e. God’s moral law) prohibits the indefinite use of NFP – nobody may switch from artificial to natural birth control on a sort of “permanent” basis. It is permitted only as a temporary measure, in certain circumstances, to allow couples to space children if absolutely necessary.
I would think that, except in the cases of the wife’s genuine and serious health problems, the marriage might well be ruled null as a result of permanent use of NFP, just as in the use of artificial contraception, because, in both cases, the serious health exception a given, the couple has lied when they said they would accept children lovingly from God, and so their marriages (or, as I heard one priest describe them: “their sterile marriages”). may well be found to be null in any marriage tribunal.
I am thinking of one case (not known to me personally – I was told about it) where the non-Catholic bride-to-be was asked (in the absence of the Catholic groom-to-be) how she was going to manage half a dozen children now that she was marrying a Catholic. She replied that she had no intention of having children, let alone half a dozen, not that he knew it. So, clearly that marriage would be declarable null, were the husband to find out and seek an annulment.
The Pill is immoral, not due to the damage to health which results, but because contraceptives are immoral per se. Otherwise, if the health issues were resolved, that would suggest that the Pill would be acceptable. That’s not the case. Contraceptives are immoral per se – of themselves; contraception of itself is an evil, because it contradicts God’s moral law and thus His will for the human race, that married couples are pro-creative – that they participate with Him in the peopling of the earth, in bringing new life into the world. So, of itself, thwarting the conception of human life is an evil. When necessary, for short spaces of time, or, in the case of serious health issues, natural family planning is permitted because it is not, of itself, evil, but were it to be deliberately used throughout the years of fertility with a view to living a child-free life, then, I think that would obviously defy God’s plan for marriage and would surely be a very grave sin. However, assuming both spouses have agreed to use NFP, which by its nature requires the co-operation of the spouses, then I am not sure that either party could achieve an annulment, should they fall out over the best colour to decorate the living room…
Unless they really wanted one of course – in which case, ask Papa Francis!
Well said, I heard of a case where people were using the natural method for a short time, but then realised exactly what you say, who where they to thwart God’s plans. Sadly they never had children at all.
Perhaps this violation of the vow helps explain why so many childless Catholic marriages are ‘cursed’.
Galatians 6:7…’be not deceived, God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap’…
I would suggest that there are always going to be negative consequences when nature in subverted.
What contraceptives – of any type – do is to fundamentally change the ‘grammar’ of human sexuality, rendering either the man, but more usually the woman, an object in the face of the other. Thus the sexual act is no longer a reciprocal giving of two persons, a coming together of two bodies, but a taking of one by the other, and this cannot be without consequences for both the taken and the taker. (Of course, the sin is greatly compounded in the case of abortifacients which are simply post-conception contraceptives, but that is another story.)
The unfortunate truth is that contraceptives have consequences which go well beyond the psychological and spiritual health of those who make use of them. Take the question of oestrogen in the water supply, for example. It is surely significant that this article comes from my favourite read (and I don’t think), The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/02/water-system-toxic-contraceptive-pill
When I first read this article it brought back memories of a lecturer in philosophy (but one with a background in the sciences), in my undergraduate years, who used to say that oestrogen would wreak havoc in nature, the signs of this being, in his opinion, already evident. But even at that time (we were in the 1980s) such things had to be said behind closed doors for fear of the feminist jackboot.
Leaving aside the moral and ethical dimensions for a moment, have contraceptives really been the great liberators of women that the prevailing cultural orthodoxy proclaims them to be?
What liberation is it that is based on a chemical construct and which shuts down openness to new life, surely one of the most defining characteristics of womanhood? And what a liberation! Forget the rich and the high fliers who, in any case, would have farmed out the joys of motherhood to nannies and boarding schools. Most of the women I know not only toil away in the workplace, but they do all the things at home which women have traditionally done.
And the consequences for children? The natural bond between mother and child is, if not severed, then seriously compromised as children at a very early age are farmed out to baby minders and nurseries, often at significant financial cost, to say nothing of the psychological effects on the child. (One middle class woman I know sat down one day, just as she had consigned her first born to a nursery, and said, ‘This is crazy. My professional husband earns more than enough for both of us, and what I earn is going in large part to a very expensive nursery. Would it not make more sense to stay at home and look after my child.’ And she did. She said that she had never made a wiser decision because the effects of her presence on her child and on her home life generally were so palpable. But she also said that her fiercest critics were her fellow women who thought that as a ‘kept woman’ she was failing to realise her potential.)
And the consequences for men? Contraception has blurred the complementarity of the sexes. Men are men, and women are men too, if you get what I mean. Femininity as a virtue has largely been destroyed, as a walk down any High Street in the country will sadly confirm. I just wonder what the long-term effects of this might be on children, particularly boys, to say nothing of husbands.
Ours is an age in which humankind refuses to be beholden to anything apart from reason, and a very narrow concept of reason at that. Thus it is overboard with tradition, of which religion is a very significant part, and anything that reeks of tradition. (Just take a look at modern ‘art’, which I would not advise generally without the aid of a preventive stiff whisky.) But prior to the repudiation of tradition, there is the much more fundamental repudiation of nature which is viewed as an oppressive strait-jacket to be undone by technology. And let there be no mistake about where this comes from. It is nothing other than a manifestation of the Satanic ‘Non serviam’ (‘I will not serve’, a phrase attributed to Lucifer), something that is confirmed, in my view, by our paradoxical exaltation of non-human nature (gaia, David Attenborough, anthropogenic global warming, polar bears, pandas, Laudato Si’) to the point where it has become an idol.
Prognosticum.
“Leaving aside the moral and ethical dimensions for a moment, have contraceptives really been the great liberators of women that the prevailing cultural orthodoxy proclaims them to be?”
Absolutely not. Contraception has imprisoned women and made them turn their backs on the most wonderful part of womanhood – i.e. motherhood.
Now they think of children as a burden to be farmed out to nursery nurses and talk constantly about the need for “more affordable child care” so that they can work longer hours and take up jobs further away from home in order to rake in the cash. It’s tragic but I think they will be old women before they realise that they were fooled into this phony emancipation.
The Church hierarchy is not helping women to see this, because they have decided, obviously, to keep a cowardly silence on the subject. I suppose people would get up and walk out during a sermon on that subject but so what? Let them. It’s better than staying to make a sacrilegious Communion.
I have read the comments on here and with all honesty I can’t say that I have practiced what I’ve preached . Of course marriage is for children but when a man and woman are together they don’t want baby after baby. Margret Sangers mother had 18 pregnancies in 22 years. Just for a moment look at that number . Now I am no fan of Sanger or of Planned Parenthood but she seen the suffering of her mother ( 11 children survived and she had 7 miscarriages ) I know my own mother had 1 miscarriage and it affected her so what 7 had on a woman in between trying to look after 11 must have been hard . Also it’s ok speaking of abstinence when you are not in that situation. Remember ( in marriage if a man refuse a woman of love and vice versa that’s wrong ) .I am no fan of The Pill etc , in fact I think al just stop there . After reading what I have just put down am glad I’m now on my own. Sometimes we look in the past with rose tinted glasses . I love my brothers and sisters and throughout our life’s we’ve always been close .But I can remember many nights going to bed hungry and would have given anything for a peace in DIP ( the posh name now is fried bread ) . There were usually 2 reasons for not getting one either we didn’t have a shilling for the gas ,or we had no bread 7 of us staying in a room and kitchen was certainly not what my parents wanted for any of us . And am not on here trying to play the fiddle. Anyone on here born just after the War ( the 2nd one by the way ) know what am talking about. Among us there were no fat children in fact everyday looking back was a day of fasting and abstinence. Sometimes when I talk to friends about back then they say it wasn’t that bad ( o yes it was ) and just to end off pedophillia was alive and well unfortunately. My very first memory is of a car stopping and a man trying to grab me in I was 3 years old . The older kids thank god pulled me off of him then we ran for our Fathers . Funny now looking back the more prosperous among us were the ones with smaller families ,contraception is obviously nothing new.
FOOF,
I don’t think anyone is looking back with rose-coloured specs at the past. You are right to say that “contraception is obviously nothing new” since “the more prosperous among us were the ones with smaller families”. That’s true – and they were by and large Protestants who were wealthier with smaller families. However, it’s been condemned by the Church since the earliest times.
Your entire argument is based on two things: the material hardship which you experienced in a large family, and the fact that abstaining from intimacy is not easy in a marriage.
Your first argument about hardship growing up in a large family, appears to take no account of the fact that the reason you went to bed hungry, wasn’t because you belonged to a large family but because of evil Government policies which permit unjust employers to get away with paying low wages, etc. It’s not God’s fault that those parents who obey His law and keep their wedding promise to welcome children lovingly from God, are often the victims of such material injustice.
You don’t specify the number of your siblings – in my case there were “only” four of us plus mother and father but we were never wealthy. Far from it. I believe there would have been five of us but for a miscarriage – possibly more than one, since I know the abhorrence with which my mother viewed the whole contraceptive mentality. And another friend told me that she couldn’t take the Pill, adding (tellingly!) that “anyone who goes to put that drug into her mouth, knows it’s wrong.” By the way, with reference to your remark about the suffering caused to the mother by miscarriages, the Pill is no help there: contraceptive pills are abortifacient – dictionary definition: An abortifacient (“that which will cause a miscarriage” from Latin: abortus “miscarriage” and faciens “making”) is a substance that induces abortion.
It’s completely counter the current material/secular culture of contemporary society to value poverty in any way, shape or form, so I won’t try to do so. We’re all very used to a much easier lifestyle now, and the “responsible parenthood” mantra implicitly frowns upon large families. Heavens, the Pope himself now frowns upon large families and disdainfully refers to the mothers you mention as “breeding like rabbits” if my memory serves me correctly. Having a middle-class home with all the trappings, is now the goal of most newly-weds. It’s years since I heard a bride-to-be or a new bride saying she was looking forward to having children. In fact, I think I’m correct in saying that the last person I heard saying that was my own sister, who said, looking beautiful in her wedding dress and veil, that she was hoping to have at least eight children! God sent her five, so she’s had to make do and mend, as the saying goes.
Moving on to your second key argument, I don’t mean to sound heartless, but for you to say, effectively, that abstinence is too difficult for married couples, is to deny the life of grace. Always, we are held to a higher standard, by Christ. Sexual restraint is difficult for everyone. Of course, there is a particular difficulty for married couples but that is part of their state in life. After all, not every act of intimacy will result in a new conception. And, of course, women are only fertile for a very few days in the month, so abstinence should not be that big a deal – it’s not like anyone’s facing a biblical 7 years famine!
While I understand your point, and have human sympathy for it, the fact is that such sentiments are, in essence, selfish. We’re all selfish, of course, but it seems to me that the only area of life where selfishness is not only tolerated but raised to the heights of virtue, is the area of sexuality. Priests have failed to preach “the higher things” for the past 50 odd years and so Catholics have not been exhorted or inspired to recognise in their marriage, the call to holiness which may require periods of abstinence. Seen as a loving duty or mark of the holiness of the married state, abstinence surely would not be burdensome. I have spoken with young married couples about this in the past, and I recall one mother of a large family saying that for the short spells of time when they made use of the natural fertility cycle, she and her husband were especially close. I do agree that, minus the spiritual attitude, minus that Catholic quality in the marriage, then – exposed as we all are to the sex-obsession around us – it is virtually impossible to live a truly Catholic life as a married couple.
Sadly, too, as you have just demonstrated – and I don’t mean to minimise the cost of fidelity to God’s moral law which your own mother so generously observed – Catholics, by falling prey to the contraceptive mentality, have lost sight of the crucial truth that God has chosen to make marriage His means of bringing new life into the world, chiefly so that these new souls will come to “know, love and serve Him in this world, so that they can be happy with Him forever in the next.”
Apologies for the sermon but you know me, I never say two words when 100 will do!
Editor,
I may have misunderstood you, but not all contraceptive pills are abortifacient.
Of course, you are spot on in so much of what you say.
I wish I had gone for the jugular in my piece above and stated that the divorce between the sexual act and fertility caused by contraception will one day be seen as the principle downfall of the West. Of course, it is an expression of the general apostasy which afflicts us.
Prognosticum,
Thank you for that correction – I’ve quickly checked just now and you ar right; I should have said some contraceptives are abortifacient.
Thanks Ed you take care. God Bless.
Faith of our Fathers,
I think that a lot of what you are describing has to do with the failure of successive governments, of all colours (but in Scotland the Labour Party must, I am sorry to say, shoulder a large share of the blame, particularly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, if for no other reason than that Scotland was for many years virtually a one party state), not only to promote social justice, but to promote policies in favour of the family. Instead public policy favours the individual, not to say individual whim, and this is to the detriment of society as a whole.
I grew up in council house in the West of Scotland in the sixties and seventies. There were four kids in the family, which I suppose was of medium size for the time. I had a very happy childhood. There was never very much money, but we were never poor. Above all, we had great neighbours and access to schools with very good teachers which was an enormous blessing. I will never forget my primary school teachers in particular, all of whom I can still name for the seven years I was there. Great and dedicated ladies all of them; strict (the belt was used as and when necessary), but they taught us to love learning, above all reading. More than anything else, perhaps, they instilled in us a morality and mutual respect.
For us, the family was very important. Fridays would see my younger sister and I go to a widowed aunt’s house for tea straight after school. She was a wise and generous old soul, as well as a great baker. Looking back, her influence on us was enormous. Then there were the grandparents whom we visited every weekend. My maternal grandmother in particular was very supportive of my mother and was a real expert in child rearing. She kew all about the various standard infectious diseases of childhood and what to do about them. She also knew a lot about how to produce great food on a budget. She died in 1984, but I always remember saying that the time would come when children would come out of a vending machine. How right she was!
But signs of the rot that was to come were already setting in. The rise of feminism and its influence on public policy was beginning to make itself felt. Above all, an absurdly generous welfare system was beginning to pervert public morality as it became the ambition of many a sixteen-year-old girl to become an unmarried mother since with that status came a social security cheque (‘giros’ they were called at the time) and a council house. This, together with absurdly easy access to divorce, prepared the way for the fatherless social disaster which we see today, with solitude and loneliness so much on the rise.
As the devil Screwtape says to his nephew Wormwood in CS Lewis’s ‘The Screw Tape Letters’: ‘The creatures are always accusing one another of wanting ‘”to eat the cake and have it’”; but thanks to our labours they are more often in the predicament of paying for the cake and not eating it.’ How very true.
To the editor
Reference recent blogs I have checked with a fertility counsellor and all forms of the pill are abortifacients. Also the pill does not act as a contraceptive after the embryo (child) has been created-it causes an abortion (the death of a child).
My spiritual director and confessor believes the church is modernist from top (Francis) to bottom with a few notable exceptions. He believes the council is the problem not the way it was interpreted. He believes a return to the Latin mass would not just put everything to rights but understands its adherence desire for a return to pre conciliar orthodoxy. He states the majestirium and doctrine of the church supports my stance that we should avoid avoidable situations where we support supermarkets who sell abortifacients and thus subsidise the process of killing children. He states that to say for everyone one person I convert I turn another nine off as it were is utilitarianism.
Love and prayers
Liam
Liam,
It is irrelevant to me whether some or all contraceptive pills are abortifacient in the sense that my argument (and the Church’s argument, God’s argument) does not rest on whether the pills are abortifacient. I think I explained very clearly in my earlier post that the reason contraception is immoral is because it contradicts and thwarts God’s plan for human life, and ultimately, therefore, for the eternal happiness of souls.
When Prognosticum suggested that I was wrong to say that all contraceptives are abortifacient, I did a three second Google and could not find any source which stated that ALL contraceptives are abortifacient, so I acknowledged that I may be wrong about that. Not an issue. Whether your counsellor friend is right and all the links I read are wrong, really isn’t important. Nobody should be using contraception whether or not they are abortifacient. The mentality in our society today is so pro-abortion and anti-child that nobody is going to suddenly stop taking the pill because she finds out it’s abortifacient. If only some of the clergy, like your priest friend, would tell them that they are headed for Hell, that might have some effect, but nothing else.
As for your high opinion of your spiritual director because, WOW, he actually thinks the Council is to blame for the dire state of the Church but doesn’t think the restoration of the Mass is much of an issue, well, tell him to read the letter from the two Cardinals to Paul VI at the time, in which they tell him that this new order of Mass, this novus ordo “is a departure, in whole and in part from Catholic theology of the Mass” and ask him to reflect on the fact that this new Mass with which most priests today have no problem, is akin to a slap in the face to God, who is due (and commanded us to give Him) true worship, not some Protestantised service of sharing a meal. This nonsense of “understanding” the desire for the old Mass for secondary reasons such as an “inherent desire for a return to pre-conciliar orthodoxy” reveals him to be a thinly disguised modernist. Even the terminology “pre-conciliar orthodoxy” as if the eternal truths of the Faith can be written off as some sort of nostalgia prior to Vatican II.
These “orthodox” leaning priests are part of the problem. Notice that your spiritual director/confessor manages to keep his “orthodoxy” just on the right side of the dividing line that would bring him into conflict with his Bishop. Taking the anti-abortion line is one thing. Tolerable, just about these days. But what if he actually realised that the whole shebang began with the introduction of the new Mass with its stated aim of protestantising priests like him and ignorant laity? THEN he would have to act and risk unpopularity. No wonder he’s happy to supprt your supermarket campaign.
Liam, I’ve no problem with you choosing to shop wherever you wish and encouraging others to “convert” to the pro-life cause, but a few more converts to the Catholic Faith would be more like it – that way you’d be killing many birds with one stone, so to speak. and, as Our Lord told us, once we seek the Kingdom of God first and foremost, all of these other things (an end to abortion included) will be given unto us.
To the editor:
I have done my best to ensure these items are on related topics
1. Until the Lambeth conference Anglicans prohibited contraception. Contraception is wrong for everybody not just Catholics
2. The latest appointments of cardinals ensure a liberal cabal and heritage for the church especially on life issues. In the early church St Peter was picked out by Christ by interview as it were and subsequent hierarchical appointments were made by the drawing of lots etc. Could someone explain to me when, why and how the system of voting for a pope was brought in since we now face more rigged elections for the papacy since the electors will be the hand picked liberals of this pope. Also is this process of election of the pope by vote part of the churches infallible teaching?
3. Did anyone come up with an answer to the blogger who asked for alternatives to Lloyds bank who advertise gay marriage as part of their overall marketing strategy or are all banks just the same? I already exclude the co-op bank because of their link to pharmacy and abortifacient provision etc. after research my savings are with the Coventry building society which still operates as a building society. I see a conceptual link between the suggestion to switch banks for moral/ethical reasons to my campaign to switch to Aldi and the local market from supermarkets the support of which subsidises the provision of abortifacients etc.
4. On a positive life note our 45th grandchild was born last night. Mum had a rough time and is stitched everywhere after an emergency section. Please pray for her. No doubt bloggers get fed up with my combative style. however my family has had a lifetime of attacks from catholic parishioners telling my wife to have me snipped and ‘you are never having another one are you?’ etc. etc. Of course the same people who said such things now say to us ‘aren’t you lucky’. My saintly wife normally very patient says she feels like punching them in the mouth. A 90 year old priest told me that St Augustin said that a man is bishop in his own house. For some years now when any of the garbage masqueraded as Catholicism washes across any of the thresholds of my family I immediately challenge it by dialogue, written correspondence to the pope, hierarchy, bishops, priests etc. to the best of my limited spiritual and intellectual capacity. Thankfully my 5 sons who are gas engineers with one exception also tackle the nonsense head on as do my daughters involved in catholic education. The later pay a heavy price. e.g. my last daughter went back to school after maternity leave and was confronted by the total school assembly of 7-11 year olds who were been told about transgenderism and that an 8n year old boy would in future be called by a girls name, dress in girls clothes and should be treated in all respects by everyone from then on. She cant stomach it and both her and her cousin another devout catholic are to leave this so called catholic school at the first opportunity knowing that they would be blacklisted by catholic educationalists as trouble makers. They will probably end up teaching in non-Catholic schools. I could go on and on but you all know the score better than me. There now follows a pointed combative, loving comment to the editor and her team:
Stop telling me to stop praising you. I’m sure you can see why catholic truth is such a beacon of hope in a catholic church gone mad. I can take it as well as dish it out so be assured that to be called a puritan and an extremist just spurs me on to do more of the same even though I sometimes get it wrong as I believe some of you do. To the editor remember Sophie Scholl and to Athanasius remember Robert Ask leader of the pilgrimage of grace who said ‘we will not have this new religion’. After lies and false promises from Henry v111 he was strung up by chains on York Castle taking three weeks to die. This puts in sharp focus the garbage of Pope Francis and so called Anglican prelates. So I’m going to carry on using catholic truth as an invaluable if at times misguided like me source knowing that at least in this slit trench we are all pointing the riffles the right way not like the rest of the church shooting so called allies in the thigh and sides instead of fighting the rabid, merciless, devil-inspired modernism which is rotting the church from within. Our lady of Garabandal said many cardinals, bishops and priests are on the road to perdition and taking many souls with them. Sister Lucia of Fatima said the last attack of the devil will be on the family – and don’t I know it from bitter personal experience however the gospel makes clear we will win in the end and Our Lady said in the end my immaculate heart will triumph. Our lady of good success said when all seems lost I will intervene. St Agustin said that the safest form of revelation is that based on reason. Taking into account Our Lady’s comments and the current state of the church we surely cant be far away from her intervention.
Love & Prayers,
Liam & Family
Liam, congratulations on the birth of your 45th grandchild! Amazing and I hope your daughter recovers soon. How on earth you can manage to keep track of all the names, ages and birthdays must be a challenge indeed. We are blessed with 5 beloved grand children…pales into insignificance besides 45!
Liam,
Your post is very interesting but I am surprised to see a traditional Catholic quoting an unapproved apparition like Garabandal. The one thing I’ve learnt from this blog is that if I returned to the traditional Mass and stuck with Fatima and Lourdes, I couldn’t fail to be on the right road! Once we start following unapproved apparitions, we put ourselves in harm’s way because the devil uses them to lead people astray.
It’s good if you can avoid the banks and shops that are unethical, but it’s not always possible and so we can all only do what we can. I don’t think there’s any bank that is not partnered to some homosexual group and even the few banks and shops that are not right now, will become attached to them eventually. It’s a poison, spreading everywhere these days.
IMHO, you are mistaking the editor’s tendency to stick with not forcing unnecessary burdens on people with being misguided, but I don’t see it that way. I think editor is right just to be uncompromising on dogma and moral teaching but in things to do with practise, leaving us to use our own judgment. I don’t agree that that is misguided, I think that’s the Church’s approach. One of the great saints said we should not make life harder than necessary for people and accept “all that the Church allows”. I think it was one of the early fathers of the Church. If you are retired and free to do all the checks and change banks and travel to shop, etc. that is great, but I couldn’t do that, and I know a lot of people who couldn’t do that, they don’t have a car and are busy workers. But well done you for managing to make a stand.
Also, congratulations on your newest family member. That’s wonderful news. Christmases must be fun in your house – LOL!
Margaret Mary
Good post, and expressed with your usual gentle and yet firm style. (I hope you’re getting a pay increase – it’s about time, but don’t tell you know who….)
Therese,
“Pay increase”? For Margaret Mary? Are you kidding? She who wrote: “I think editor is right”?
Huge cheque in the post – like, yesterday! 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀
It is remarkable that, in a time of great enthusiasm for environmentalism, that little or nothing is said regarding the pollution caused by artificial contraception (estrogen in the water supply, which I understand negatively affects aquatic life).
I think this reality shows up both environmentalism and contraception for what they are.
Gabriel Syme this article supports your view.
Love and prayers Liam
Vatican paper: Birth-control pill linked to male infertility
By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY — The birth-control pill is causing “devastating” environmental damage and plays a role in rising male infertility rates, said the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.
“We have sufficient evidence to argue that one of the considerable factors contributing to male infertility in the West — with its ever decreasing numbers of spermatozoa in men — is environmental pollution caused by the byproducts of the pill” released in human waste, the article said.
Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the Vatican-based World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, wrote the article that appeared in the paper’s Jan. 4 edition.
The pill has created “devastating ecological effects from tons of hormones being released into the environment for years,” the article said.
According to news reports, scientists worldwide have found sexual abnormalities in fish and other water-dwelling creatures that have been exposed to sewage contaminated with synthetic estrogens and other hormones like those used in the pill.
Some European studies have blamed increased male infertility and poor reproductive health on environmental causes, especially estrogenlike chemicals found in pesticides, plastic food containers, shampoos, cosmetics and other products.
The newspaper article said that, with such clear evidence of the adverse impact the pill’s use has on the environment, manufacturers should offer more information about the ecological effects of the use of these synthetic hormones.
The article was based on a 100-page document published by the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations to commemorate last year’s 40th anniversary of the encyclical “Humanae Vitae” (“Of Human Life”).
Titled “Forty Years of Humanae Vitae From a Medical Perspective,” the document examines the consequences of men and women distancing themselves “from the fundamental concept of the encyclical and choosing to favor artificial contraception.”
Much of the public is unaware that the contraceptive pill also acts as an abortifacient because it affects an embryo’s ability to implant successfully, the article said.
The pill’s function is usually described as suppressing ovulation, but in many cases, it said, the synthetic hormones in the pill create conditions that impede implantation and, therefore, are “abortive since they expel the small human embryo.”
While the pill’s ability to impede implantation is well documented in scientific studies and even noted in pharmaceutical companies’ sales literature, the article said, “Curiously, however, this information doesn’t reach the wider public.”
To the Editor
When our children were born early and died in the womb we asked for their bodies for burial. In one case I asked for the baby’s remains the be kept intact. By design or necessity the baby’s remains resembled mincemeat. They asked me to bring my own container to the hospital and made me pour our baby’s remains into my own receptical from theirs and sign a form saying I would arrange for the disposal of products of conception. When I complained about this from a faith perspective they hereafter, at this hospital anyway, brought a little cradle with a small blanket with the tiny baby in it for any parents who wanted this done. This is one of the issues that made me continue to trade in reality and be proactive with regard to life issues. The editor’s comment “It is irrelevant to me whether some or all contraceptive pills are abortifacient” needs some qualification. The Pontifical council for the family handbook for confessors states “A specific and more serious moral evil is present in the use of means which have an abortive effect impeding the implantation of the embryo which has just been fertilised or even causing its expulsion in an early stage of pregnancy. The Priest’s for Life organisation confirmed IUDs, hormonal brith control including progestin only pill, injections, Norplant, implanon, the patch, virginal ring, emergency contraception and the pill cause abortions and not contraception. Ten years ago the Vatican stated that people using the contraceptive pill and other abortifacients excommunicated themselves. They further stated that those allowing counselling or ref o ending their use of the pill etc including priests, doctors, health workers, spouses etc were also excommunicated.
I have confirmed with a priest that the use of condoms and coitus interuptus although gravely sinful do not incur automatic excommunication. Thus as the Vatican says there is “a more serious moral evil” in using abortifacients than non abortafacients. Thus I now realise how that avoiding shopping at supermarkets which supply abortifacients means I not only don’t subsidise the provision of products which kill children but which can also cause automatic excommunication for Catholics including priests who remain silent on these issues. I agree with the church and the editor that all forms of contraception are intrinsically evil but according to the church some are more evil than others and kill children rather than preventing their conception and cause some laity and priests to excommunicate themselves. Love and prayers Liam
Liam,
Please don’t misquote me. I did NOT say “It is irrelevant to me whether some or all contraceptive pills are abortifacient”
I said the following:
“It is irrelevant to me whether some or all contraceptive pills are abortifacient in the sense that my argument (and the Church’s argument, God’s argument) does not rest on whether the pills are abortifacient. I think I explained very clearly in my earlier post that the reason contraception is immoral is because it contradicts and thwarts God’s plan for human life, and ultimately, therefore, for the eternal happiness of souls.”
Quite a difference. Thus, to further emphasise my point, IF the only, or key, argument against contraceptive use were that some forms of contraceptive pills are abortifacient, that would mean that contraception itself, is acceptable. That is, if people stick to using contraceptives that are NOT abortifacient, there would be no moral problem. That is wrong. Contraception, whether or not abortifacient, is an evil which thwarts God’s plan for procreation.
No need to apologise. A nice bouquet of flowers on my next birthday – April 1st – will do nicely 😀
I use to be on a pill and it made me more Depressed , and when I took myself off I had with draws and I don’t like that
Tinkbug78,
Trying to play God always ends badly.
Yes it does I found that out the hard way and I’m Blessed to still be here now I try to help others
That’s great. Keep up the good work. You might well help save souls as well as bodies.
I am now a mentor I talk and tell my story to people so they can see that there is a way out of your depression, but in a healthy way. Sure I have depression but it’s not that bad as it use to be. I missed 8 years of my kids life due to my depression and it took hard work and me being devoted. I still have depression it’s always a One day at a time but as long as I have air in my lungs I have to keep going. I do support Group every Monday and Wednesday and those help. I find it fun we go shopping do arts , walk around I made friends cause we are all the same..
Tinkbug78
We all have crosses to bear in life, yours is depression and you seem to be approaching it with the right spirit. Keep up the good work and remember that even in your darkest moments God is much closer than you know. I would suggest that if you don’t already recite the rosary you would do well to learn it and recite it daily, and then watch the difference that makes to your outlook. I promise you that you will not be disappointed.
I will thank you for your kind words
Tinkbug78
You are most welcome.
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