The Roots of the Culture of Death and Restoring a Culture of Life
Or
Inhuman Humanism vs. Christian humanism
By Monsignor Philip J. Reilly
Founder of Helpers of God’s Precious Infants
In the year 1959, I was a Deacon in the major seminary, still studying and waiting to be ordained a Priest in May of 1960. The successor of Peter at that time was a man in his eighties, called Pope John XXIII. Many felt that the Cardinals at the Conclave had elected the elderly, Pope John XXIII, simply to be a sort of caretaker of the Church, until the younger Cardinal Montini would be ready to succeed him, which he did at the next Conclave and took the name, Pope Paul VI. The year 1959 was the Hundred Anniversary of the death of Saint John Vianney, the Cure of Ars. And so through 1959, until August 1960, Saint John Vianney was proclaimed as an outstanding example for all Parish Priests.
In the year 2009, fifty years later, I was awaiting my Golden Jubilee as a priest in May 2010, while again an eighty year old Pope, Benedict XVI was now the successor of Peter. The year 2009 being the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Death of St. John Vianney, the Church again declared from June 2009 to June 2010 to be the Year of the Priest, with Saint John Vianney held up as a model for priest to follow. On hearing these very similar facts, a very young person might conclude that nothing much has happened or changed in the past fifty years. But any older person, who has lived through these past fifty years, knows the tumultuous changes that have taken place both in the Church and in the World during this period of time. What brought about these changes?
The Council was more pastoral than dogmatic
Pope John XXIII did not consider himself as the Church’s caretaker. He insisted that we open up a few windows in the Church and let some fresh air in. He proclaimed that the work of the renewal of the Church by the First Vatican Council was never completed since the Council was interrupted and the work must be completed. Thus moved by the same Holy Spirit, who knew also what changes were about to happen in the Modern World, Pope John XXIII called for a Second Vatican Council to rejuvenate, especially in a pastoral way the Church. In 1959 the reaction of the Seminary Faculty and the Seminarians was from shock to disbelief. Some were even saying the Pope has gone senile. Shortly after the beginning of the Council, Pope John XXIII died and the new Pope, Paul VI had the difficult task of maintaining continuity with the past, while allowing pastoral changes in the Church which could help rejuvenate it, knowing that some changes may need to be corrected or stopped later, if they proved not to be helpful. The Council was intended to be more pastoral than dogmatic.
The river of renewal was weakened by offshoots of dissent
The difficulty was that inside the Church, some saw the Council as an opportunity to challenge and question many of the Churches’ teachings, especially in regards to moral practices. Their source of authority for change was not the Holy Spirit but rather their constant refrain of “in the spirit of Vatican II” and “one should follow one’s own conscience”. The problem was peoples’ consciences were being formed by the World and dissident theologians rather than by the Magisterium and the teachings of Vatican II. The dissenters became theologians of the World, believing as progressive and modern, whatever practices the world was proclaiming. Then they used their minds to try to justify it. The true theologians of the Church, believes the Church’s teachings and use their minds to show that the beliefs of the Church are reasonable or do not contradict reason. The river of renewal unleashed by the Holy Spirit in Vatican II to renew the Church and the World, was constantly being weakened by offshoots of dissent, not only against all sexual morals restraints, inside and outside of Marriage, but even such fundamental dogmatic teachings as the real unique substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist was questioned or watered down. Eventually not only Eucharistic devotion and adoration was dismantled but many devotional practices were also challenged or discouraged or dropped.
The so-called Spirit of Vatican II became the problem
These dissenters didn’t accept the infallibility of the Pope, because it conflicted with theirs. In Mass the catechetical sermon was replaced by the homily on the scripture. It seemed harmless except within a decade the younger generation in the Church no longer understood, or could explain or defend their faith. Thus without a knowledge of their Faith, the ways and values of a World without Christ, slowly became more acceptable and attractive to them. Vatican II was not, and is not the problem, but rather the rejection of Vatican II in the so called spirit of Vatican II became the problem. Indeed on the occasion of the hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of St. John Vianney, Pope John Paul II was going to Ars in France, where St. John Vianney was the Cure. In twenty-five years, how radical a change had taken place? Well, the Pope was verbally attacked by many of his own priests in France for holding up to them an outdated Saint for the Modern Priest. All of this dissent was a major tragedy because it was at the very time that the World needed a strong united Church to proclaim the truth without ambiguity because of the changes about to happen in the World. What were some of those changes?
The ‘Chip’ and the ‘Pill’
In the year 1959 Americans were introduced to the ‘Chip’ and the ‘Pill’. The Chip, the size of a newborn’s thumbnail, is the nickname for an integrated electronic circuit with a backbone of silicon, an ingredient of common beach sand. The Chip was able to do a million calculations a second while the old IBM computer in the 1950’s with its bulky vacuum tubes which occupied a whole room had a very limited capacity. The Chip promised to provide the capacity to advance technological capacity in quantum jumps with the potential to alter life styles fundamentally, by putting a computer or microprocessor on a chip. For the most part it has done so, and done so in a very positive fashion, from putting a computer on an individual’s lap, to help putting a man on the moon. Everything is now computerized from cars to airplanes. It has made information accessible to millions without them leaving their homes.
Pregnancy no longer considered a blessing
The Pill is the nickname given to the chemical contraceptive, that the providers also promised would radically alter social behavior of people, especially in the family. It has but in an incredible disastrous manner. By deliberately blocking God’s actions and the conception of a new life, it has changed the thinking of many people on the purpose of sex. The final purpose of sex is no longer a personal act of love open to life but rather, the purpose of sex is pure pleasure even to the exclusion of life. Pregnancy is no longer considered a blessing but something to be feared and avoided at all costs, even by way of an abortion. The woman has become for many, no longer a person to be loved but a sex object to be used and even abused. It opened the door to unnatural acts being acceptable and approved by society and laboratory reproduction being applauded and funded. It provides Governments with ways to control forcefully their population. The negative effects have been monumental.
Suddenly in America a million women had irregular cycles
The Church Fathers in Vatican II, in the document on the Church in the modern World, Gaudium et Spes, reaffirmed its constant teaching that to obstruct life in the marriage act, or to destroy the product of the act afterwards, is intrinsically wrong. Pope Paul VI said he would decide whether the new chemical Pill taken before the act was to be considered also a contraceptive and therefore morally unacceptable. That is all he was deciding. The secular media, however, urged on by dissenters, gave the impression the Pope was trying to determine if the use of all contraceptives would be okay. In May 1960 the contraceptive Pill, whose distribution in America was still illegal, was distributed under the cover of being a health product that would correct a woman’s irregular menstrual cycle. Suddenly in America a million women had irregular cycles that needed to be corrected and healed. The women were not told about the incredible negative side effects of the pill on the woman’s body. Finally on June 7th 1965 the US Supreme Court in the decision Griswold vs. Connecticut legalized the Pill for married people in the privacy of their homes. And so, on that same day, June 7th 1965 a nurse called Griswold, working for Planned Parenthood, distributed the first legal contraceptive pill in America.
By evening the media halted their praise of the pope
Pope Paul VI became the first Pope to visit America, when he arrived in New York City to address the United Nations, on the afternoon of Oct. 4th 1965. This was only four months, after the Pill had been legalized in the United States, namely on June 7th. In the great U.N. Assembly Hall, Paul VI in French gave his famous talk to all the Nations of the World about No More War, War Never Again. When the Pope arrived in the morning, he was treated by the Media like a hero. He received constant applause in the first two thirds of his talk about peace and War Never Again. Then everything changed, when the Pope to the surprise of the United Nation members, the Media and many others pushing for the Church to change its position on contraceptives, said: “…the life of man is sacred; no one may dare offend it. Respect for life, even with regard to the great problem of the birth rate, must find here in your Assembly its highest affirmation and its most reasoned defense. You must strive to multiply bread so that it suffices for the tables of mankind, and not rather favor an artificial control of birth, which would be irrational, in order to diminish the number of guests at the banquet of life.” By evening the Media halted their praise of the Pope.
The teaching was rejected by millions
The Pope knowing that the poor and undeveloped Countries were the target of the population control people, who favored given bread to the poor only if the poor use the contraceptives given to them with the loaf of bread, the Pope in 1967 issued his Encyclical, Populorum Progressio, in which he stressed the spiritual nature and uniqueness of each person must be taken into account for any true development of peoples. Otherwise the Pope said we will not be involved in a true development of humanity but in an inhumane humanism. And so it was no surprise considering his statement to the United Nations in 1965, his encyclical in 1967, on the true development of people that on July 25th 1968 the Pope in his Encyclical Humanae Vitae clearly upheld the
Church’s teaching about the sacredness of Marriage and affirmed that the use of contraceptives during the marital act and before it, by way of the chemical pill were equally intrinsically evil. No longer could anyone say the teaching is not clear. So they attacked the Pope’s authority and the reality of the Natural Law and proclaimed the sacredness of a person’s individual conscience. Wrong is wrong even if everyone is wrong and right is right even if everyone is wrong. Although the arguments against contraceptives in the beginning were abstract and academic, Pope Paul VI in section #17 of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae, ominously prophesied in concrete language what would happen, if the teaching of the Church was to be rejected. The teaching was rejected by millions and unfortunately the negative effects predicted in section #17 are now a reality. The culture of death was now firmly established with its tree of death being firmly implanted with its many deep and long roots. The roots of the tree of death are economic and philosophical; sociological and eugenic; legalistic and juridical; technological and scientific. Some knowledge of these roots is important in understanding and uprooting them.
Rather than expressly telling the poor to drop dead
Thomas Malthus a pessimistic minister and economist in 1798 published in England his famous Essay on the Principle of Population As It Affects the Future Improvement of Society. He studied population statistics and agriculture production and concluded that unless the birth rate were drastically reduced, the food supply would be unable to sustain the growing population and mankind would be doomed to pestilence, famine, and death.
On the other hand, with outright irony, for Malthus, famines, plaques, natural disasters was nature way of controlling the population of the poor and we should not get in nature’s way with misguided charity. Direct relief by the rich to the poor only made matters worse. It would also only encourage larger families and laziness. None of Malthus’ dire predictions proved true during his lifetime or since, and yet the Malthusian theory of overpopulation to this day has influenced many rich population control peoples and the public policy of most Governments. Rather than expressly telling the poor to drop dead and not to have children, they do it in a more subtle fashion by tying to the aid we give to the poor, the requirement of limiting their families by the contraceptives given to them with the loaf of bread. Now abortion, sterilization has been added to the package. Euthanasia will not be far behind.
Steps should be taken to prevent the ‘Unfit’ from propagating
The British naturalist, Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859, after his research in the Galapagos Islands led him to believe that all species are formed through a gradual process of evolutionary change and that the survival or extinction of organisms, depended on a process of natural selection. Darwin said he owed a debt to Malthus and was influenced by Malthus’ views on population yet Darwin in the beginning did not apply his theory to the social or political sphere but a Victorian biologist and philosopher called Herbert Spencer, who lived from 1820-1903, was quick to do so. Spencer created Social Darwinism by applying the idea of evolution to social circumstances and claiming that by the competitive processes society removes its inferior elements and only the fittest survive and the unfit are removed and progress is made. Like Malthus, Spencer was opposed to the passing of any laws to help the poor or even subsidizing social programs to help the poor but rather steps should be taken to prevent the ‘unfit from propagating out its unfit and permit them to die off so as not to weaken the racial stock.”
Discouraging the breeding of the inferior
Sir Francis Galton 1822-1911 a writer and sociologist, a cousin to Darwin, was a Social Darwinist and the Father of the pseudo-science of Eugenics, namely a good birth. Galton in his book Hereditary Genius expressed his belief that a man’s character and capabilities was primarily shaped by heredity and therefore the present generation had the power to improve the inborn qualities of future generations by actively weeding out or discouraging the breeding of those whom Galton considered inferior, which for him was obviously the poor, those physically different like black people or naturally morally corrupt like the Jews. He naturally argued for the sterilization of the feeble minded, the criminal, the insane as necessary to reduce the propagation of the ‘unfit’. Indeed Darwin in his work the Descent of Man incorporated quotes from Galton’s book Hereditary Genius. Obviously the goal of Eugenics is to check the birth rate of the Unfit to bring about the improvement of the race by the productivity of the Fit and only that amount which can be properly cared for. Galton based his conclusions on simplistic ideas and generalizations and like Malthus and Spencer had an incredible tendency to accept sweeping generalities while ignoring well established and proven medical and biological data.
The educated elite and rich tycoons embraced Malthusian ideas
In spite of shoddy scholarship the so called educated elite and rich tycoons, in Western Society like James Hill, the railroad tycoon, Andrew Carnegie, the steel tycoon, John D. Rockefeller, the oil tycoon, quickly, scandalously embraced these Malthusian ideas coming through Spencer and Galton. This scientific racism was more acceptable than a simple ethnic racism based on emotions and hate. Besides considering themselves among the so called ‘fit’, it obviously made them feel good about themselves. It provided them with justification why others should leave the planet earth and not themselves.
The theory was acceptable on the highest levels
The first International Congress of Eugenics was held in London in 1912. Among the 800 participants at the Eugenic Congress were some of the most prominent scientists, social scientist, politicians and prominent intellectuals. In 1921 and 1932 the International Congress was held in New York City and again well attended by the intellectual and scientific elite. Now that the theory was acceptable on the highest levels the next step was who and how to apply it.
It soon returned in a more insidious form
The Eugenics movement grew strong in England and was strongly embraced in America and Germany where the eugenicists from both countries worked hand and hand together. As a matter of fact Leon Whitney of the American Eugenics Society sent his book the Case for Sterilization to Adolf Hitler and received back a personal letter of thanks from the Furher. The racist Madison Grant sent the Furher a copy of his book The Passing of the Great Race and also received back a personal letter from Adolf Hitler who proclaimed that this book was his bible. Under Hitler, eugenic ideas became the foundation for the organization of a whole State, which was looked upon with approval both in England and America. Indeed, a number of American eugenicists visited and were welcome in Germany, such as Lothrop Stoddard who wrote The Rising Tide of Color Against White World –Supremacy. He expressed his support with how the Nazi’s were “weeding out the worst strains in the German stock in a scientific way from the Third Reich.” Not only were his writings featured in Nazi school textbooks but Lothrop met with Heinrich Himmler, chief of the S.S. and even had a personal meeting with Adolf Hitler. After World War II the revelation of the Nazi atrocities hindered but did not crush the eugenics movement. It soon returned in more insidious forms especially with Margaret Sanger of America and her deadly offspring, the International Planned Parenthood and Marie Stopes of England and her deadly offspring, Marie Stopes Internationals, thus supplying new ways to implement the eugenic program on a grander scale.
Sanger advocated segregating the unfit
Margaret Sanger was born in 1879 and became aware of Malthus from her radical freethinking father and was converted to the principles of the sexual revolution to liberate women from sexual bondage through the influence of Emma Goldman, a militant utopian in France. She met many prominent Malthusian eugenicists supporter like H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw and the sexologist, Havelock Ellis. Eugenics gave her “scientific” grounds to justify her radical sexual liberation views and to argue for birth control and to emancipate women from the family. In 1917 she founded a magazine called The Birth Control Review that featured articles of prominent eugenicists and utopian friends like H.G.Wells, Pearl Buck, Julian Huxley and Havelock Ellis. It caught the attention of the intelligentsia. Sanger in her Plan for Peace advocated segregating the country’s millions of ‘unfit’ on to farms where they would receive adequate care like forced sterilization and birth control to protect the “fit” citizens from them.
Sanger spoke against the cruelty of charity
In 1922 Sanger revealed her strong scientific racist bent in her book The Pivot of Civilization where she presents birth control, sterilization and abortion as the way to solve social problems. Of course today she would include euthanasia. She spoke against the ‘cruelty of Charity. She said that the most serious charge that can be brought against modern benevolence is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression. She was repulsed by the poor working class created by the Industrial Revolution and who in her eyes were possibly worse than the sub-human Negro.
One would need a permit to have children
In the 1930’s Sanger wrote an article entitled: A Code to Stop Overproduction of Children. Some of the ways expressed in the article to purify the human race was to agree that a marriage license would not include the right to have children. One would need a permit to have children issued only to couples if they meet the qualification decided by others. Obviously the feeble-minded, habitual criminals, those with inheritable disease, the biologically unfit should be sterilized and isolated.
With a religious zeal she set out to implement her ideas. In 1914 she founded the American Birth Control League. In 1925 in New York City she held the International neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference at which she gained the complete support of those involved in birth control and eugenics. In the thirties, Sanger sought and obtained corporation grants, foundation bequests and the endorsement of well known celebrities and politicians such as Katherine Hepburn, and Eleanor Roosevelt, from Rockefeller to Henry Ford and later on even Presidents, Truman and Eisenhower. She secured the backing of rich disciples of Malthus like the Fords, the Mellons and the Rockefellers to fund her Birth Control League.
A massive genocide of black African Americans continues
Her first Birth Control clinic was opened in a poor area of Brooklyn, New York. In 1939 in America she undertook her very successful Negro project. Birth control clinics were set up in areas of high concentration of African Americans. The purpose of the clinics was to radically diminish the number of Blacks. Gifts were given to Black ministers to encourage the Blacks people to use the birth control clinics. The Negro project was incredibly successful. Even today Planned Parenthood still runs abortion clinic in many of those same areas with the results that today a massive genocide of the Black African Americans continues. For example, today in the Borough of Brooklyn where Sanger opened up her first Birth Control Clinic, the rate of abortions of Black unborn babies, according to the 2008 New York State Vital Health Statistics is the scandalous statistic that out of every one hundred black unborn babies in the womb, seventy will be killed while still in the womb by abortion, with the government paying for at least eighty percent of them with tax payers monies. It is a tragic irony that many blacks in leadership positions in America are still outspoken in their support and funding of Planned Parenthood, showing the so called Negro Project of 1939 is still successful
Birth Control League’s name is changed
In 1942 Margaret Sanger changed the name of her Birth Control League to Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In 1948 the Federation became the International Planned Parenthood for the goal was now no longer simply the unborn babies in Brooklyn but indeed throughout the Whole World. To accomplish this mission the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau financed the development of the birth control pill. Furthermore to accomplish this worldwide mission, Sanger needed the involvement of the United States Government and other Governments, the United Nations and a massive conversion of the populace. How did this come about? Who helped her?
The New Population Council
John D. Rockefeller III, one of the richest men in the World being the great grandson of the oil tycoon, was a strong believer in the ideals of Malthus and out of his own funds set up, with the help of Fredrick Osborn, the well known eugenicist, the New Population Council in 1952. He built a global network of population experts who worked to increase the supply of contraceptives to undeveloped countries. He constantly lobbied to get the U.S. Government to become involved and join the population control forces. He would not have been successful without the propaganda crusade of a man called Hugh Moore.
Hugh Moore and Paul Ehrlich and the Population Bomb
Hugh Moore the owner of the multi-million dollar Dixie Cup Company was an enthusiastic convert to Malthusian thinking. After World War II playing on the fears of people about the atomic bomb, he inundated politicians and important people in particular and the public in general with his pamphlets entitled the Population Bomb. In 1968 the ecologist and butterfly expert, Paul Ehrlich published his Book “The Population Bomb” taken the title from Moore’s pamphlet. Ehrlich’s Book was filled with dire Malthusian predictions of what was going to happen to the World between 1970 and 2000, if we did not radically reduce the number of people. The secular media gave great coverage and credence to his Book” the Population Bomb”. In 1981 Julian Simon a Professor of Economics published his well documented book entitled the Ultimate Resource, namely, man and his imagination. He documents how everyone, one of the gloom and doom theories of Ehrlich, on energy, food, raw materials, pollution, standard of livings and population itself, are either not well founded or already proven to be false. He suggests that additional population actually leads to improvement in economic well being. Recently Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate struck the same theme by declaring that depopulation was a real cause of the present global economic recession. The Pope also wisely stresses that in this ever interdependent world that any attempt of global governing to resolve world problems must allow at the same time real subsidiary independence among nations to maintain their own values, otherwise a worldwide state of tyranny is more than likely to become a reality. Obviously Julian Simon’s scholarly work the Ultimate Resource received limited publicity from the media and the population control organizations.
National Security Study Memorandum 200
William Draper a friend of Hugh Moore was appointed by President Eisenhower to chair a committee on foreign aid. The Draper Report in 1959 became the first official U.S. government report to endorse population control in the context of foreign aid. With pressure from both Moore and Rockefeller, the United States Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 was passed and enshrined the Malthusian doctrine as official U.S. policy. They convinced enough members of Congress that growing populations was also a threat to U.S. national security and therefore aid should only be given to those countries that control their populations. In 1975 President Gerald Ford accepted the plan set forth in Henry Kissinger’s National Security Study Memorandum 200, which urges to use control of food resources to control foreign populations. Thus American aid was no longer about feeding the poor and the hungry, helping the sick and improving their economic conditions but rather the implementing the Malthusian idea of reducing fertility in the undeveloped countries.
USAID and its population control programs
This new policy was implemented on a large scale in 1966 when the United States Office of Population created USAID, the United States Agency of International Development and appointed Dr. Ravenholt a fervent Malthusian to be its Director until the year1979. Like Margaret Sanger he was convinced birth control was the key to public safety, freedom from hunger and the way to development. The Office of Population under him shipped billions of condoms, abortifacient birth control pills, and IUD’s to the areas of the world, populated by the ‘Unfit’. The Director Ravenholt gave enormous funds to International Planned Parenthood Foundation and the Population Council to carry out Ravenholt’s family planning population control programs. One wonders to this very day whether Planned Parenthood really has to lobby for government grants or is the United States Government still implementing their Malthusian policy by giving hundreds of millions of dollars each year to these organizations who have the infrastructure in the countries and the places where the ‘unfit’ live. Using these organizations disguises from the average citizen what the Government is unfortunately really about in their so called development programs.
World Bank’s foreign aid suddenly was to control population
The final pieces were finally put into place when under pressure from the President Johnson’s Administration; the UN’s General Assembly passed a resolution by unanimous vote that called for special aid for governments who were willing to make efforts to decrease population. In 1967, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities also known as the Population Fund was established. It was to be funded by voluntary contributions from countries that support birth control as the way to control population. In 1968, President Lynden Johnson appointed Malthusian Robert McNamara as President of the International Bank for Reconstruction also known as the World Bank. Suddenly the main goal of the World Bank’s foreign aid was to control population. When President Bush around 2003, became informed and convinced that the UN Population Fund was involved in the recent coercive population policy on the people in China, he immediately shut off U.S. funds to the organization. Unfortunately, President Obama shortly after his election, quickly gave again the Population Fund, millions of US dollars to continue their Malthusian work.
Support also came from powerful foundations
Uprooting this culture of death would seem almost humanly impossible, when one realizes that not only does the United States Government and other Governments fund, these Malthusian organizations of death but that their support also comes from powerful Malthusian driven Foundations, like the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates, Buffet Foundation; Foundations like William and Flora Hewlett, Ford, Zoros, Turner, MacArthur and Mellon Foundations. Having uncovered for you the economic, sociological and eugenic roots of the culture of death, may I briefly unearth for you some important legalistic and juridical and philosophical roots of this tree of death.
The use of technology in the area of biochemical sciences
The population control Malthusian scientists were anxious to implement their eugenic goal of a massive scientific eugenic cleansing of the human race, by weeding out the unfit in their reproductive labs. The scientists were confident that the computer chip’s impact on technology and the use of this technology in the area of the biochemical sciences, made the screening out of the genetically imperfect, a reachable goal. Furthermore, the scientist were convinced not only could they remove the unfit but they could actually improve the future stock of the human race, through their experimentations on life in the same reproductive labs by way of embryo stem cell research, human cloning etc. However, there were two inconvenient truths that needed to be negated or removed before their Brave New World could be fully realized. What were these truths?
Two inconvenient truths needed to be negated
The truths were the absolute sacredness of each human life and the uniqueness of traditional family. They knew to attack directly; either the absolute sacredness of life or the uniqueness of Family, would be a foolish. Indeed in the United States Declaration of Independence, the founding fathers declared that certain truths are so self evident, that no one would dare to argue against them, namely that the truth that an innocent person’s right to life is absolute since it comes directly from God the Creator. The signers of the Declaration declared that no government, no Court, no person has the right to take another innocent persons’ life from them, and any government that would attempt to do so, would lose all grounds for its authority, which authority comes from the God who gives life. Moreover it was common accepted wisdom among the people of all nations that a wise government should support and strengthen family life, for as the family goes, so goes society. The question was how to get such a radical change in ideas.
Philosophical ideas are important
Ideas are important, especially philosophical ideas, for everyone knows, to sow an idea is to reap an act; to repeat an act is to sow a habit; and to sow habits is to reap a character or a culture or a civilization. Good ideas results in a good character or a culture of life. Whereas, bad ideas result in a bad character or a culture of death. Our Lord said by their fruits, you shall know them. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. By their fruits you shall know ultimately, which is a culture of life and which is culture of death. The philosophic ideas or theories of the eighteenth and nineteenth century on the origin of societies; on truth and freedom; on materialism and socialism and communism, gained wide acceptance both in Europe and in the United States and also helped paved the way for the growth of the culture of death in the twenty and twenty first centuries.
The thinking of Hobbes and Rousseau on society
Thomas Hobbes1588-1679 held the origin of the State is simply a result of a collective contract inspired by self interest and enforced by the power of the majority. Furthermore Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712-1778 in his social contract theory, claimed all contracts, all societies are a result of the exchange of will of two or more parties, and every contract can be declared terminated, if it is clear one or both parties no longer will it. Thus a Judge can declare whether either party has withdrawn his or her will, and that therefore, the marriage contract no longer exists. For Hobbes and Rousseau the idea that the State exists because God made man a social being and the society of marriage exists because God made man, male and female, and therefore what God has joined together man must not separate, was no longer relevant or even acceptable. Thus the societies of the State and Marriage being man’s creation, men could agree to change at will its rules and laws. A practical atheism was taken roots. The thinking of Hobbes and Rousseau on society, is obviously helpful in attacking people as prejudice against homosexual unions, who support traditional marriage as God‘s creation with no equal and the only place where human life should be conceived. They realized insisting that all human life should be conceived only as a result of an act of love in the context of the traditional family would put a full stop on their Laboratory reproduction of humans.
The Father of French Positivism
One of the most influential philosophers was August Comte (1798-1857) the “father of French Positivism. According to Comte, the human mind passes through three stages: the theological stage, trying to explain facts by supernatural agents; the metaphysical stage, seeking abstract reasons or verbal explanations; and finally to the positive stage, which holds strictly to real data, namely to the order of observable cause and effect. For Comte the positivist, reality existing beyond observable facts, must be viewed at best with an agnostic attitude. Obviously, this resulted in the glorification of the mathematical, physical and biological sciences as the only source of real and certain knowledge. In England John Stuart Mill 1806-1873 applied the principles of positivism to all areas including logic, psychology, and ethics. Quickly the principles of positivism were applied to evolution by people such as Herbert Spencer. Positivism became the philosophy of the materialists.
The rejection of faith and the dethronement of truth
Since the existence of God can only be arrived at through reason and the mind was no longer considered a reliable instrument to arrive at truth, then God and Faith beliefs must be excluded from the public Square. Besides since so many wars in Europe were religious in origin, instead of rightly saying the State should not establish a Religion, they insisted instead, that the State should exclude God and the practice of any Religion in the public square, In correcting one error, they created a greater evil, for a society without God is seriously detrimental to all living in it So by the end of the nineteenth century God and Faith was dethroned. By the end of the twentieth century, Reason too being rejected, Truth was dethroned and now only a secular society was acceptable where God and truths of Faith must be excluded.
Practical atheism reigns
The dialectical idealism of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) and the diametrically opposed philosophers Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) and Louis Buchner (1824-1899) who popularized a strict materialistic view of life were incredibly merged in the thinking of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). And Lenin was soon forcefully setting up a socialistic, communistic society based on the dialectical materialism and atheistic ideas found in the works Das Kapital and Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In this Godless society, man exists for the State not the State for man. By removing the Creator from the picture the devaluation of man was inevitable. In the reproductive labs today, where practical atheism reigns, God being excluded, human life in the labs is once more devalued and enslaved but this time by modern progressive high tech totalitarianism. The Secular State and the atheistic scientists will remake this world in their image and likeness. In the culture of death man’s thinking is imminent, that is hubristic, sinless man is turned in on himself seeing no need for God or a Savior to resolve problems or bring about progress.
The triumph of ethical relativism
Philosophically everything now seemed to be in place for the Brave New World of genetically cleansing the human race. The concept that something is right or wrong whether it be legal or not, was discarded. Now using a positivistic approach something is wrong because it is illegal but if you change the Law it is right. So people will accept whatever we legalize whether it be divorce, contraceptives or even abortion. Rightness and wrongness, namely truth is separated from freedom. Freedom is now the absolute value, since a universal and objective truth arrived at by the mind is not reachable and therefore must not be imposed on all through the Law. This thinking is the triumph of ethical relativism. Dr. Martin Luther King, the great civil rights leader in America, said that the Law cannot make you love me but the force of Law must make you respect me. Remove the Law and the weak are at the mercy of the strong. No one is weaker than the unborn infant. The unborn child’s last hope for life is the Law. And suddenly on January 22nd 1973, in America, that last hope was removed, because the Law no longer protected God’s precious infants in the wombs of their mothers.
The death knell of western civilization
For suddenly in America everything was radically changed overnight, when on that day Jan. 22nd 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court, in an act of judicial tyranny, the judges legislated from the bench by handing down the infamous Roe vs. Wade Decision that legalized abortion in America through the nine months of the pregnancy. It was not only the death knell for the unborn, but it was the end of Western Civilization, whose culture was founded on a belief in God as Creator and was rooted in the principles of Judaic and Christian ethics. By that decision the quality of a person’s life now became the absolute value, while ones right to life became relative to the quality of one’s life, as determined by others. There was never a question of when life begins, but rather has the quality of a person’s life reached such a level as to make that person’s life worth living. A decision not to be determined by the unborn, the chronic elderly sick, the down syndrome child , or the handicapped person but by others, who after making the decision are free to choose whether to end the other person’s life or not. Obviously euthanasia, where the quality of a person life has lessened, was always included in the reasoning used in the decision to permit elective abortions. Although most citizens were shocked by the Supreme Court Decision, yet the eugenic driven, positivistic thinking birth control movement quickly disposed people to accept the judicial decision on abortion as legal and therefore okay and a reasonable back up for any contraceptive failure, with the same reasons being used to justify both.
A nightmare realized all too soon
Clearly those in the racist eugenic movement are now complacently convinced that the victory is complete and there is no way the people of life can turn it back. Why otherwise would they have placed about six weeks ago on the front page of Sport Section of the New York Times Newspaper a posed picture, which would have fifty years ago, caused a reaction by the readers, close to a riot. The caption over the picture was “A Dream Deferred, Almost Too Long.” In the picture there were three attractive women, who obviously had just visited the beauty parlor to prepare for this posed picture. The excuse of putting them on the sport page was because they were retired professional tennis players. But the real reason they put them into the paper was because they exemplified that people, including sports celebrities, had completely embraced the brave new world of the culture of death. In the picture, two women were seated while a third woman stood between them but slightly behind them. Each of the women seated held a baby on her lap. The babies were twins. All were smiling. Looking at the picture, I said to myself, wait a minute, there is no way you can connect the dots and make moral sense out of this picture. The reason was because there was no visible man in the picture. The women were lesbian lovers who were unsuccessful in their adoption efforts. So they went the route of In Vitro Fertilization. Yet they were still without success because their eggs were defective. Their friend in the background finally donated her egg and after the two women perused the profiles of the men in the sperm bank, they finally decided on a genetically fit father. After making their choice, the sperm was used to fertilize her friend’s egg and then finally the zygote was implanted in the womb of one the woman who was obviously not the biological mother but in reality a surrogate mother. Over the picture I would have changed the caption from “A Dream Deferred, Almost too Long; to the caption: “A Nightmare Realized, All too Soon.” Instead of a riot from their readers viewing the picture, they expected no reaction from their readers and sadly they seemed to have been right in their judgment.
An inhuman humanism
Pope Paul VI in section 42 of Populorum Progressio said: “what must be aimed at is complete humanism. And what is that, if not the fully rounded development of the whole man and of all men? A humanism closed in on itself, and not open to the values of the spirit and to God Who is their source, could achieve apparent success. True, man can organize the world apart from God, but without God man can organize it in the end only to man’s detriment. An isolated humanism is an inhuman humanism. There is no true humanism but that which is open to the Absolute and is conscious of a vocation which gives human life its true meaning. Far from being the ultimate measure of all things, man can only realize himself by reaching beyond himself. As Pascal said so well “Man infinitely surpasses man”.
The complacency of the population control advocates is not well-founded
In my closing remarks may I simply say that the present complacency of the eugenic, population control advocates is not well founded because there are so many sound reasons to hope that in spite of the long roots of the tree of death, it will definitely be uprooted and the tree of life will once again blossom, and a culture of life will be restored. For time is on the side of truth and with the passing of time, it has become clear, even to past buyers, that the produce being sold from the tree of death are beyond rotten. The deadly produce is not only causing death to the weak and dependent but grief and sorrow to the strong who survive. Obviously the product can’t sell itself but will still need massive deceptive advertising to convince any new buyers to buy it. Many who have purchased it in the past will not recommend it to others. Others publicly condemn it. Indeed many of those living in the so called undeveloped world, who are considered unfit to breed, their eyes are now opening wide and they can clearly see the hook of death attached to the demonic aid and so are refusing to bite into such a deadly bread.
The problem is not population explosion but implosion
Where there is no offspring, no life; there is no future. In correcting the so called problem of overpopulation, the population control advocates have been insanely involved in overkill, so that if there be any population problem in the world today it is not population explosion but implosion. Just recently Pope Benedict XVI wisely pointed out in Caritas in Veritate that depopulation is clearly one of the causes of today’s World Wide Financial Recession
Operated on the wrong patient
Besides these physicians of death have committed a major mistake, since they performed their death operation on the wrong patient, namely on the fit who according to them should breed rather than on the unfit or should not breed. Today the sixty richest countries in the World, all have a dying population. Their nations are below the replacement level to survive as nations. Everyone in Western Europe including now the Governments know that if the Moslem families, who have for the most part rejected the culture of death, were not having children, Europe would become like a wasteland by 2050. The first step in resolving a problem is to recognize that there is a problem. Both individuals and Governments are becoming more reluctant to subsidize their own or their nation’s death.
The Romans’ greatest gift to posterity
The ancients believed in Fata, namely the Fates. Fate comes from the Latin deponent verb for, fari, fatus which means to speak. The past participle fatus means that which has been spoken. For the ancients it was madness to act against the fates, namely that rational force guiding an ordered universe or cosmos. For them man’s reason enabled him to participate in this force. For the good pagans when a man separated his freedom from truth then such a man was driven by irrationality or furor or madness and became destructive of self and of others and must be checked by the Law. For the Romans they believed that their greatest gift to posterity to maintain civilization was the gift of a Reasoned Law. We too believe the eternal plan of an intelligent God guides this universe and our reason enables us to participate in the mind of God and to bring God’s Eternal plan to completion Rational man knows that there is more to the world than only what you can learn from the senses or the experiential sciences. But God has given us a further light called Faith by which we can know and participate in the eternal plan of God to bring all mankind into unity and perfection with the Triune God through the death and Resurrection of Jesus , the Father’s only beloved Son who is the merciful Savior to a fallen humanity. And that the eternal plan of God is being worked out, is being brought to perfection. Or as the Prophet Habakkuk reminds us in the face of great evil, the Lord said to him: Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets, so that one can read it readily. For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint: If it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late. We must have hope in the resurrection even in the midst of our own passion as the closing words of the Book of the Prophet Habakkuk reminds us when the prophet says: “For though the fig tree blossom not, nor fruit be on the vines, though the yield of the olive fail and the terraces produce no nourishment, though the flocks disappear from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet will I rejoice in the Lord and exult in my saving God.”
God’s Will – will be done
For each of us then, our job at this Congress is to learn or be reminded once again what is the Vision of God, Live the Vision and proclaim courageously the Vision to all in the World. Our ultimate reason for hope then, in the face of great evil, is ultimately knowing we are doing God’s Will, and God’s Will, Will Be Done, the Vision Will be Fulfilled.
Republished with author’s permission.
Source: http://www.helperslibrary.info/themes/helpers/text/The_Roots_Culture_of_Death.pdf
Click here to visit Msgr. Reilly’s Helpers of God’s Precious Infants website
