Archbishop Byrnes is correct. Both abortion and the sexual abuse of minors are rooted in the "hardening of hearts." For what is abortion other than the ultimate abuse of a minor?
And while we can be thankful that we have a Shepherd who is willing to not just condemn the evil of abortion, but willing to trace it to the root and tie it to what Pope Benedict labeled the "filth in the church," there will be no real conversion of hearts until the contraceptive mentality is just as bravely confronted.
For abortion is just last-resort birth control.
That's not my opinion. The Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, the nation's number one abortion provider, noted in 2014 that "about half (51%) of abortion patients in the United States reported that they had used a contraceptive method in the month they became pregnant..." due to "method failure."
The Guttmacher study goes on to note: "The methods most commonly used by abortion patients in 2014 were condoms (24% of patients) and the pill (13%)."
This is not a surprise, the FDA states: "Out of 100 women whose partners’ use (condoms), 18 may get pregnant."
And what do contracepting couples do when they get pregnant and don't want to be pregnant?
Condom failure is also probably at the root of Guam's Chlamydia epidemic:
Guam ranks among worst in the nation for chlamydia cases
And while the current government's answer is more of the same: “We want to focus on educating the community on getting birth control, condoms and having responsible sexual activities,” Flores said, our Shepherds, if they are serious about the real "reason to fear," the loss of one's soul - especially their own, must squarely face the most secret of all scandals in the Church:
"...every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil." - Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 2370
I have always been against abortion based on the notion that a fetus is a person. Recently I found a passage in Exodus 21 (verse 22) which reads "When men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no harm follows, the one who hurt her shall be fined, according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine." Were the fetus a person dying as a result of such injury, the man hurting the woman would be subject to a much harsher punishment, even death, but that is not the case. I have not found a Catholic theologian who has addressed this passage. Do you know of any?
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