Introduction
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| The cell of Blessed Titus Brandsma |
Many in the US, UK and Europe have been taken aback by President Obama's audacious and unconstitutional attack on the religious liberty of the Catholic Church in the USA. At the time of writing, we do not know where it will all end. However, while we do not know where it will all end, we cannot say that we have never been here before, and our patron happens to be just one heroic testament to that historical fact.
His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, has made various speeches, notably in Germany and in the United Kingdom, on the dictatorship of relativism and the dangers that become apparent when efforts are made at State and societal levels to 'erase God from the public sphere'. We should not be surprised if His Holiness's words are considered prophetic even within the time of his own Pontificate.
The economic crises affecting the West present Governments with numerous difficulties. How will the State respond to such economic turmoil when already respect for human dignity has been undermined by over forty years of abortion provided by our own legislatures? How will States whose moral foundations, built upon Christianity, have suffered and continue to suffer dramatic erosion, respond to the challenging times in which we now live? We see that in the United States, the Executive branch of Government has initiated an unprecedented attack on a fundamental principle of human freedom - religious liberty. It is tempting for this essay to focus on the USA because it is there that the Church is under greatest attack in the West, but it is clear that the forces of liberalism at work in the US are also at work in the United Kingdom and indeed Europe.
This essay will steer clear of drawing upon conspiracy theories and will also steer clear of examining liberalism at a pan-European governmental level, but will examine the case of one country and one country alone: the United Kingdom. The aim of this essay is to highlight the many areas in which liberalism is the huge threat to human freedom, all genuine human freedom, that the Holy Father has said that it is and why its path must inexorably end in tyranny. It does not intend to be alarmist, this essay only aims to point out why those democratic freedoms cherished by Western civilisation are now at such great risk. It aims to examine those trends and forces already at work in Western government and society and, using these trends, to offer projections of a future which can only be described as belonging to a dystopia.
The Pope and the Riots
Last Summer of 2011, when the riots that caused headlines such as 'London's Burning' were emblazoned across newspapers, many different reasons were given for the sudden and totally unexpected explosion of youth riots that occurred in London and then provincial cities and towns across the United Kingdom.
Different commentators offered different insights into why this shocking behaviour by Britains' youth occurred. And yet, perhaps the most informative insight was given by the Holy Father himself. The Catholic Herald reported that:
'In a speech welcoming Nigel Baker, Britain’s new ambassador to the Holy See, Benedict XVI said: “When policies do not presume or promote objective values, the resulting moral relativism, instead of leading to a society that is free, fair, just and compassionate, tends instead to produce frustration, despair, selfishness and a disregard for the life and liberty of others.'
The fact that these riots involved a great many children and young people is telling. What the Holy Father indicated is that the riots in the Summer were an outer manifestation of an inner reality. The British youth, those who rioted, were educated under liberalism, according to the values, or distorted values of liberalism, and showed the world just how effective liberalism can be in destroying objective moral values. The riots, now seemingly forgotten, were bad. The riots were frightening.
The riots themselves, however, were just a snapshot of what is already here in the United Kingdom and what is to come. This does not necessarily mean weekly riots in the United Kingdom, no, because riots themselves can be quashed and policed. What it means is that we have reached a point in the history of the United Kingdom when children are brought up without objective moral values to such a degree that the moral landscape of Britain is enshrouded in darkness. The buildings of various cities burned last Summer, but the charred remains were symbolic of a generation of children who believed that nothing around them was of value but that which could be stolen.
As Marxists say of capitalism, liberalism's long and winding march to collapse is borne out of its inherent contradictions. Marxists believe that capitalism will collapse because of its inherent contradictions which will lead inexorably to anarchy. Liberalism, on the other hand, unleashes a different kind of anarchy. The anarchy that liberalism unleashes is moral anarchy. The difference is that even though liberal societies will collapse due to their inherent contradictions, moral anarchy can, perversely, be managed. It can only be managed, however, by an incredibly strong, over-bearing and all-powerful State.
For let us be in no doubt. The State raised these children and will continue to raise children who believe exactly what the State has taught them - namely - that there are no objective moral values or timeless truths which appeal to the development of their virtue. For a long time now, the State, in its education of the young has been teaching children to do quite as they please, regardless of the consequences. This is not to say that the State has been teaching children to steal from shops. No, that would be false. No school teacher tells children to steal. However, children have been taught 'explicitly' how not to cherish the most sacred and intimate arena of human life. That is, sex and human sexuality.
Liberals believe that when religious people talk of the sacredness of human sexuality and of the human need for marriage in order for sexual activity to be given dignity, that those religious people are mere 'prudes' who find sex disgusting and repulsive. For the most part, this simply is not true. The Christian religion sees sex as a gift from Almighty God for the union of a man and a woman in a unitive and procreative relationship, indeed, an exclusive relationship, until Death parts them. Liberals often ask why the Church is 'obsessed with sex'. The answer is that if the Church is obsessed with sex, it is because the Church acknowledges that sexual activity is the most intimate activity which can take place between two people in all of human life. Two people can pray together, that is a lofty and indeed holy bond between those persons. However, the most intimate activity that two people can engage in together will always be sexual intercourse. It is precisely because sex is the most intimate activity that can take place between two people in human life that it is vital that children are taught to respect it as if it were holy and sacred.
Now, as everybody knows, it has been a long while since children were taught in the United Kingdom anything that remotely resembles a Christian vision of sexual morality, because it has become fashionable for it to be disregarded or even ridiculed by society at large. In fact, if a teacher held a traditional Chrisitan notion of sexual morality and tried to pass that on to his or her pupils, he or she may even find themselves without a job, because the State has placed strict rules on sex education in the classrooms of schools, indeed, even Christian schools. The rules are not strict in the traditional sense of the word. They are strict in as much as sex education is to be taught with as little moral content as possible, because to give an objective moral character to sex education would be to defy liberalism's chief tenet - that there is no objective moral order from which we can derive our values.
As mentioned at the beginning of this essay, there are forces at work who may even benefit from the results of this approach in terms of teenage pregnancy, homosexuality, contraception and abortion, but we shall examine these issues later. Let us remain focused on the point I have made. If the most intimate activity that any human being can engage in with another human being has been taught to children to have no objective moral character whatsoever, and sex is emptied of its high and noble meaning, then for the child, why should any activity in human life have any objective moral meaning, and even if it does, how can it be respected? If what goes to the very heart of what it means to be human is deprived of objective moral meaning, then how can any area of morality have any objective moral meaning?
Children take things at face value because they trust those who instruct and educate them both at home and in school. Liberalism treats sex and human sexuality incredibly lightly. Too lightly. In modern Britain, sex takes place in a moral vacuum. Liberalism espouses the view that Christian morality deprives or robs sex of its meaning - a meaning founded on the pleasure principle. It is this principle, the pleasure principle, that is most valued and protected by liberalism to the exclusion of a set of objective moral values which can be given to sexual activity. Perhaps, here, we can see, in liberalism, the hangover or a rejection of the Protestant Reformation in the United Kingdom and many parts of Europe which equates all sex with impurity - Puritanism - a heresy which denies the essential good the Creator gave to man and woman in giving man and woman the gift of spousal love and the conjugal relationship. Britain's uneasy relationship with even marital sex can be seen from the phrase 'No Sex Please, We're British', lampooned by a British Broadway play in 1971. Carry On films also took a comedic slant on British discomfort with sex.
Culturally speaking, the sexual revolution of the 1960s perhaps owes as much in the United Kingdom to an innate British discomfort with sexuality and attending sexual repression as it does to the alluring appeal of the so-called 'free love' generation that dismantled it. The same can be said of the USA which was also never truly exposed to the Catholic vision of human sexuality and which was dominated by Puritan ideology. It is therefore understandable, more so here and in the US, than in culturally Catholic Spain, Italy or France that the pleasure principle is defended so vehemently against any Christian morality, since it is widely believed that Christianity destroys the unique joy of sexual love that the Church proclaims to be sacred and given a holy purpose and unique dignity within holy matrimony.
It is only when we appreciate the huge polar shift in the cultural psyche that therefore occurred in the 1960s, and what preceded it, that we understand why it is now that the pleasure principle is defended to the exclusion of Christian morality in schools and in the home, because Christianity is perceived to be a threat to human freedom, when, in fact, it is the opposite. True Christianity is now and always will be the liberator of the enslaved. It is only when we appreciate how vehemently the pleasure principle is defended in the school and in society to the exclusion of a Christian vision of human sexuality that we can appreciate why we are fashioning for ourselves generations of children with no objective morality and who have become now and will continue to become 'a law unto themselves'. For let us be in no doubt. True Christian sexual morality, as taught by the Catholic Church, is more subversive to the present political, social and moral order of the United Kingdom than is any other human ideology or, indeed, any terrorist.
The State and society, governed and ruled largely by people who hold the 1960s up as the turning point for a more progressive and tolerant society founded on individual, subjective, personal freedoms will defend, to the last, the pleasure principle in sexual morality to the exclusion of Christian morality because to go 'back' to a traditional Christian morality which is by all accounts objectively healthier for all of society, morally, culturally, spiritually, would be to abandon a social project that is simply too big to fail. It is a social project that the State will always bail out, no matter what the cost because the liberal social project is ideologically 'too big to fail'. It is 'too big to fail' because it defines what society is now as opposed to what society once was deemed to be and what society must never be again - sexually repressive.
Prime Minister, David Cameron himself has suggested that the riots are evidence of 'Broken Britain'. Unfortunately, his problem (and the problem for all of the United Kingdom) is that unless objective moral values are once again placed at the heart of what children learn about sexual morality then the problem will become bigger and the State will have to become bigger in order to deal with the consequences. That is why the United Kingdom will become a dystopia. As we are seeing in the USA, the defense of the liberal cause will even resort to force against the Church because there can be 'no going back'. There, in order to defend the pleasure principle to the exclusion of Christian sexual morality, the Church must be compelled to acquiesce with the liberal agenda or She will have Her freedom removed. In order to defend licence, the Church's licence must be removed.
As we see with David Cameron's desire to redefine marriage in the United Kingdom to contradict its original meaning, the liberal agenda is not necessarily conspiratorial against the Church in intention. Only the paranoid would imagine that parliamentarians are sitting around together considering the best way to crush and silence the Catholic Church. No. It is just that the liberal cause guided by the pleasure principle unleashed to the exclusion of Christian morality in the 1960s is a cause held so dear, by so very many, that even when the education of the nation's children, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI 'tends instead to produce frustration, despair, selfishness and a disregard for the life and liberty of others' the guiding principle must be upheld and if the Catholic Church has to be silenced as part of the process, then that is a freedom worth sacrificing for the good of the social project. Even the Conservative Party in the 21st century would rather that the power and size of the State become bigger and more all-pervasive over human activity than at any time in history, than for that guiding principle to be lost.
Why We Are Where We Are
The question is, is President Obama doing something inimical to freedom because he is over-reaching his own mandate in a morally outrageous manner? We know that he is. But let us also consider, instead, a different perspective: Is Barack Obama the most intellectually, brazenly honest President in US history? I do not mean, of course, that the 44th President of the United States is an honest man. He has obviously deceived, for instance, the entire Catholic Church of the USA. I am saying he is honest in as much as he is following the guiding principles of liberalism to their logical conclusion - astonishing coercion in order to defend liberalism from its critics. A 'pre-emptive strike' so to speak, for the Nobel Peace Prize winner over those who oppose liberalism.
For, in reality, the President is taking the USA towards a 'great leap forward', he believes, for the country. I don't doubt for a moment that various organisations who funded him and who support his liberal agenda are hoping, if not praying, for his victory in the upcoming US election. Neither do I doubt for a moment that his actions are wicked and reprehensible. What I do doubt is whether the citizens of the United States have the stomach to elect the only person who counts as a viable alternative to Obama, the traditional Catholic, Rick Santorum. Is Barack Obama the problem? Or is Barack Obama just the public face, the product, of a bigger and more worrying cultural problem afflicting the entire Western world? Some would say the US would never vote for a Catholic to be President because traditionally the US has had antipathy towards Catholicism, but that did not stop John F. Kennedy being elected in the 1960s. No. If the citizens of the United States of America re-elect Barack Obama at the next election, from now on, no matter who is his Republican opponent, US citizens will have made a preference for the contraceptive culture over religious freedom and their own constitution.
So, what is more important to Western man and woman? Religious freedom and the freedom of the Churches and thereby a fundamental principle of human freedom on which the USA is built, or, ubiquitous access to contraception and abortifacients? President Obama has posed the question. Do not be surprised if the President receives the answer for which he wishes. Do not be surprised either, if similar attacks on conscience are not made in the United Kingdom and Europe because when nearly the entire Western world believes that artificial contraception is essential to the sexual act, men and women will believe that anybody who stands in the way or who disagrees with the prevailing contraceptive trend is inherently more fascistic than the President who is willing to deprive those critics of their freedom, perhaps even to the point of their arrest and imprisonment, because, as well as attempting to coerce the Church into accepting the contraceptive mandate, Obama is also shining the light on the Church that wants to control 'what you do in your bedroom, who you do it with and how you go about protecting yourself'.
It is precisely because human sexuality goes to the very heart of our humanity that Obama senses victory. Obama surrounded himself with liberal Catholic aides who agree with his interpretation of how Faith should be seen and, indeed, managed, in the 21st century. Liberal Catholicism believes that neither God nor the Church should be involved in the bedroom. Obama would not have done this if he had not seen the vulnerability of the Catholic Church on this issue and the very human weakness of the citizens of United States of America, including Catholics.
It is precisely the intimacy of sex that means that it is where our humanity is at its weakest. See. Sex is so private, so naked, so intimate and so all-revealing of the human person's inner life and even soul, that it is conversely the area in which morally we are so divided and weak. If ever there was a symbol of how afraid of intimacy, total self-giving love, surrender, responsibility and commitment we are, the condom is it. If ever there was another symbol of how afraid of the same things we are, it is the pill, and the reality is that even the 'morning-after pill', Western man and woman will defend because you never know when there may be an 'emergency' - the emergency of a new life made in the image and likeness of God.
The point is that Obama believes that 'personal freedom' will emerge victorious over the Catholic Church because the kind of freedom the Church offers us is more difficult, more demanding of us and a threat to the new liberal vision of personal freedom. Of course, managing the terrible outcomes of our innate distaste for choosing freedom according to objectively moral principles is gruesome, but, remember, to liberals, the ends justify the means, no matter how many unborn children die as a result. Christ came to save sinners. Obama came to save sinners from taking responsibility for their sexual lives. That is why Christ is the Saviour and Obama is antichrist, but, let us be clear, he is not the only one.
For the writers of this Guild of Blessed Titus Brandsma live in the United Kingdom, not the United States and the Catholic Church has already seen Her freedom of conscience restricted here in recent times, so let us not be surprised when, rather than if, it happens again. In 2007, Catholic adoption agencies were forced to either sever their ties with the Catholic Church or to close by the Labour government under the Orwellian-sounding 'Equalities Act'. Trevor Phillips, head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission recently applauded the fact that these agencies were no longer able to operate according to their consciences informed by the teaching of the Catholic Church on homosexuality, though really it was the Catholic Church's teaching on the family that was the undoing of these agencies. For saying that children require mothers and fathers, the Church's ability to place unwanted children with parents and families suitable to their development was summarily ended, only to lose, again, on appeal. The question is, how have we got to this point in the US and, in particular, in the United Kingdom, where freedom of conscience, the bulwark against tyranny, can seemingly be so easily brushed aside? How can freedom and oppression sit so happily in Western democracies side-by-side? Unhappily, or happily, depending on your point of view, our patron, Blessed Titus Brandsma provides us with an answer...
“He who wants to win the world for Christ must have the courage to come in conflict with it.”
Now, you could say that conflict between the Church and the State is as old as the Church Herself, but it does appear that we are entering into a particular time in the life of the Catholic Church when the forces of liberalism spanning vast continents are either mounting or are preparing to mount an assault upon the Church's liberty which is unprecedented in scale. It may not mean that the Church in Heaven receives countless martyrs like Blessed Titus, but it may mean that just in terms of the sheer scale of the persecution that the Church loses her full liberty to operate in the public sphere. Across the West, Catholic hospitals are under threat, Catholic doctors are under threat, Catholic adoption agencies are under threat, Catholic pharmacists are under threat, Catholic teachers are under threat, Catholic nurses are under threat, Catholic schools, universities are under threat. Perhaps, even, Catholic priests and Bishops are under threat in teaching from the pulpit the fullness of the Catholic Faith.
Catholic worship will continue, but liberal States will attempt to suppress Catholic truth and all those who remain strong in their Catholic identity will possibly be losers in this life to be rewarded in the next. For if there is one thing that the life of our patron tells us, it is that when religious liberty is attacked, the liberty to communicate Catholic truth soon follows. You may very well wonder why, if sex and sexuality is such a little, unimportant thing, that doesn't mean that much so 'why does the Church bang on about it', then why is it that it is the issues of sex and sexuality that are about to crush the freedom of the Catholic Church to operate in the public sphere? The answer is because, of course, sex isn't 'a little thing', it isn't 'unimportant' and the Church bangs on (or should) about it all the time because it goes to the heart of who we are, what we are here for and because the future of human society depends upon it.
Many have observed that Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae was never really taught by the Church. Well, like it or not, the Church in the West is about to be forced into explaining it over forty years after its widely ungratefully received release. It has to be explained now because an explanation is to be demanded of the Church by the State and, while there is a semblence of a free press, by the media. And that, dear brothers and sisters, is where we come in as bloggers in The Guild of Blessed Titus Brandsma. We know that both the Bishops of England and Wales and Catholic Voices will in the upcoming trial for the Church on our shores, explain Humanae Vitae to the United Kingdom. However, we, too, can play our part, however small that may be, whether we are to remain 'peripheral', or indeed not.
The Bitter Pill that the United Kingdom is Prepared to Swallow
Both sex and sexuality are treated with such frivolous contempt in modern society that even children are educated within our schools on how to put on condoms of a myriad different colours and flavours, but next to nothing about when to have sex and who to have sex with. And yes, I am talking about Catholic schools as well. So, what is the Catholic response to the question 'When should I have sex?' The answer is, 'When you are married'. What is the answer to the question, 'Who should I have sex with?' The answer is, 'Your husband or wife, who is the opposite of your gender.' Catholic teaching on sex and sexuality really is that simple, yet even in Catholic schools, so we hear, this is not taught very effectively. Why? Well, partly because we have over-complicated things for ourselves and partly because things have been made more complicated for us.
In a particularly highly sexualised society in which human beings are reduced to sexual commodities, sexual imagery is everywhere in newspapers, magazines, on TV, the internet, billboard posters and shop windows. People who complain about this are, again, derided as Victorian prudes, but the obvious outcome, whether you take a liberal view on this, or not, is that the very adult world of sexuality is introduced to children at a very tender age. If you take what the government tell its citizens about their response to rates of teenage pregnancy and the ongoing rise of STIs at face value, then the idea of throwing artificial contraception at pubescent children and hoping for the best is simply the best that we can do because as soon as childrens' bodies start changing, 'they are going to do it anyway'. Well, in a highly charged sexualised society, they very well might. The question is, is that really the best that we can do for children, or even, dare I say it, ourselves?
St Ignatius of Loyola said, "Give me a child his first seven years and I'll give you the man". Nowadays, I suppose that quote would receive jeers from those who believe that because a proportionally very small minority of Catholic priests have been guilty of crimes against the child, that that is a jolly funny quote. That would, however, miss the point of what the Saint was saying. Ignatius was saying that it is an adult educator's task to assist the child to develop virtue because it is virtue that makes the man, rather than vice. Vice will lead children not only away from their Creator, but into teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. It is not the educator’s role to decide or to pre-empt what children will do on becoming adults. That will always be the choice of the child or the teenager or the adult. It is the educator's role to encourage children to acquire virtue and to pass on those values that will help that child to flourish as a child into an adult. Even if an educator retains a natural pessimism about the human condition, frail as it is, or even knows that not all of his or her students will respond favourably to an education in virtue, his or her chief role is to do his or her best to help the student to attain it.
Now, while words like 'virtue' and 'vice' are rather unfashionable in modern day Britain, there is little doubt about that, objectively speaking, we know that these things exist. We know these things exist because we see them in operation in ourselves and we read about them in the newspapers every day. And despite what liberal parents and indeed most parents believe about sex in their personal lives, few parents are happy if they receive the news that their young daughter is pregnant at the age of 14. Nowadays, the phrase that is used when teenagers become pregnant is 'Why did they not use protection?'
Yet, surely, this is missing the point. Surely, a better question is, 'Why is my 14-year-old having sex when she is still, really, a child?' And, sadly, the reason that this question is asked less and less is because children are sexualised so very early in their lives that many parents assume that their children are already having sex. If a parent is shocked that their child is having sex at 14, or younger, even though the national legal age of consent is 16, then another factor comes into play. It may be that parents in modern Britain feel that, even if they want that which is best for their child, for the child to be chaste until marriage, or, in modern parlance 'to find a suitable partner at a suitable age' that they find it hard to say that because to say that would be 'judgmental' and if there is one thing you must not be in liberal society, it is 'judgmental'. No, not even as a parent towards your child. In many cases, peer pressure only adds to teenage boys' and girls' difficulties in resisting temptation at such a young age.
The Catholic Church does not deny for a moment the many pressures facing youngsters in their formative years to have sex very early in their lives. What the Catholic Church does say is that condoms and artificial contraception have, year upon year, study after study, statistic after statistic, failed to reduce the rates of teenage pregnancy and STIs among our young. Certainly, the rates of STIs or teenage pregnancies may go up or down slightly year to year, but the trend is clear. Condoms and other means of artificial contraception have not altered a trend towards early sexual activity and sexual promiscuity among the young at all. The opposite is the case. It is becoming more apparent that the State's reliance upon giving artificial contraception to the young exacerbates the problem.
So, why could that be? Let us return to the quote from St Ignatius of Loyola. St Ignatius was saying that the educator's role is to instil in the young moral values that will 'make the man' or, we could add, 'make the woman'. Now, while it is true that St Ignatius taught children to pray to God for help to become virtuous, and while it is true that the Catholic Church would never deny that virtue comes from God, who alone is All Good, there is no reason why virtue should not be encouraged and taught to children whether parents and teachers are Catholic or, indeed, not. Indeed, it is perhaps because Catholic schools are widely perceived to be centres of academic excellence which pass on timeless moral values that even non-Catholics wish to send their children to be educated by within their walls. Whether Catholic schools actually do that in modern Britain is another question which we can address later on.
The point is that whatever parents across the political, religious and social spectrum may think of Catholicism, whatever prejudices they may hold, the ideal taught by Catholicism, that children remain chaste in order to prepare for marriage to that 'special someone' is an objectively good teaching. Certainly, I believe, the overwhelming majority of parents would be happier for their children to come home to them at the age of 21 to tell them that they are to get married to someone with whom they are head over heels in love, rather than the news that they have fallen pregnant at the age of 14 to a boy of 15 or older, who had no interest in her whatsoever, other than a prize with which to impress his mates.
The likely response to this advice, given by the Church, is that 'it is unrealistic' or 'impossible' or 'unhelpful' or 'intolerant' even, to expect this ideal from children. Well, it is unrealistic, it is impossible, it isn't helpful and it will likely not be tolerated when government is content to play to the lowest common moral denominator imaginable to children, by aiming straight at their groins. If you expect children to have sex and you give children condoms, then children will have sex. If you make it clear you do not expect children to have sex, then at least they know where the boundaries are and will think even twice about crossing them. Furthermore, if you give children condoms telling them that these will protect them from STIs then you are deceiving them because, as we all know, the spread of various genital diseases, such as herpes, are not prevented by condoms and certainly are not prevented by the pill and I think I can speak for all parents when I say that no parent wants their child to contract herpes.
Yet, herpes is just what State schools, including Catholic schools, are promoting when they promote 'safe sex'. And, while 'safe sex' is doing little for the rates of STIs, neither is 'safe sex' doing a great deal for the heavily-government subsidised efforts to curb teenage pregnancy. There will be a veritable array of reasons why this is so, among which will be that all artificial contraception, including implants, condoms and the pill have 'failure rates' of which we are not really told. No artificial contraception, we know, claims to be 100% contraceptive. Condoms say so on the side of the packets in small writing. Then, as well as 'mechanical' error, we have the possibility for 'human error' in which girls and boys, one or both, decide that sex doesn't feel as good with a condom as it does without it. It surely does not take them long to discover that. Some condoms, as is well known, split. Then, we have, with the pill, the 'human error' that girls can forget to take it, as well as the 'medicinal error' that the best 'medication' in the world will always be vulnerable to failure in the world of storming human hormones. Nature, as they say, finds a way, like weeds grow from the cracks in concrete. Whatever the reasons, one thing is becoming more apparent annually. The current government approach is not working. So, if the current approach is not working, then why not change it? Unfortunately, the answer to that question depends on whether sex education, as it is, is for children, or some other party entirely.
These resources will refrain from entering into dispute over whether there are any vested interests involved in the continuation of a morally value-free sex education for children, other than to say that while sexually-transmitted infection and teenage pregnancy rates continue to remain steadily high in the United Kingdom, abortion rates, too, remain exponentially high. Everybody knows, I believe, what the Catholic Church teaches about abortion and why, but it will suffice for me to say that however many times the British Pregnancy Advice Service (BPAS) reassure the government and the citizens of the United Kingdom that abortion is a highly regrettable event for every woman, or indeed child, who enters their doors or those of Marie Stopes to procure one, the value-free sex education received by the modern British child continues to bring them more visitors on average, year upon year.
We must, naturally, take this charitable organisation at face value that they claim to work towards a society in which fewer abortions are desirable, even though they have been given the go-ahead by the UK Adverstising Standards Agency (ASA) to advertise their services on Channel 4. Could that possibly be a little reckless? Time will tell. There are lots of resources online which examine the pernicious evils of the abortion industry in greater detail, far more thoroughly than on this resource page with regard to abortion and they can be easily located.
Sorrowfully, however, offering an explanation for the Catholic Church's view of what sex education should be, but is not, cannot be completed without touching on a service present even in Catholic schools which should raise the temperature of the blood of all parents in the United Kingdom, whether they are Catholic or not. For, while it is true to say that in modern Britain, some parents, in seeking to protect their daughter's future, accompany the girl to the abortion clinic themselves, other parents do not even hear of their daughter's abortion at all. How can that be? More importantly, how can that be tolerated by the British public? The reason for this is that the Government's service to State schools called 'Connexions' is able to freely offer children a comprehensive and confidential counselling service which may result in a teenager obtaining an abortion referral, the morning-after pill, a medical or surgical abortion without the consent of parents.
While it is true to say that all parents in the United Kingdom may know the Catholic Church's teaching on abortion and artificial contraception, it is also most likely true to say that not all parents in the United Kingdom are aware that their teenage daughters, their own children, flesh and blood, are able to obtain both abortions and abortifacients through the confidential service offered by the government's school nurses without parental consent. Whatever the populace believes about abortion, I would have thought that it is every parents right to know if a daughter has had one, or is going to have one. After all, while the Catholic Church teaches that all children belong to God, who is the Father of all mankind, parents naturally regard children as their own. They are their own responsibility and their little treasures, princes and princesses.
That the government supply a chain of young customers to abortion clinics and serve children abortion pills without the consent of parents must surely raise serious concerns over whether the State believes that parents are the primary educators of children, within the care of parent's, or whether the State believes that children are the property of the State, who are now in competition with parents for parenthood of those children. More recently, in referring again to contraception, the Southampton NHS Trust has come under the spotlight for running a pilot scheme to give girls as young as 13 contraceptive implants, similarly, without their parents consent. Welcome to dystopia. Welcome to the brave new world. Welcome to the future of your country. Sadly and to the lamentable shame of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, the services availed by 'Connexions' have been allegedly offered and accepted in Catholic schools as well. Quite how many referrals have taken place, we may never know, because, you see, its all confidential. It's just between your the child and the State and that leads us nicely into the next part of the essay.
What is at the End of the Road for the United Kingdom?
Despite the fact that the novel was a work of fiction, it has inspired many, since its publication, especially those in the Press who recognise in the rise of the State and the history of the 20th century, the inherent danger of the property of the human person passing from the One Whom we, as a country, once believed to be the Source and Origin of all life - Almighty God - to an all-powerful and over-reaching government who usurps His role in human affairs. And, despite the fact that the book was a work of fiction, it is credited, alongside George Orwell's '1984' as being uniquely inspired and even 'prophetic'. The two authors clearly had similar political interests and in one of the letters of Aldous Huxley, the author praised the work of 1984, congratulating Orwell on "how fine and how profoundly important the book is". Huxley wrote:
'Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience.'
Quite whose side Huxley was on when he made that comment, the people's or the governments of the World, or whether he was joking, we shall perhaps never know. Of Brave New World, Wikipedia says, 'Set in London of AD 2540 (632 A.F. in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep learning that combine to change society.'
Now, as I said at the beginning of this essay I will endeavour to steer clear of conspiracy theories, which are many and numerous, to be found all across the far flung reaches of the world wide web. We do not know what the motives of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley were in writing their 'prophetic works', whether they were to serve as pure fiction, as a warning to society, or even interesting ideas that governments might like to put into practice. Certainly, there is so much 'doublespeak' about today - particularly about such things as 'gay marriage', two words which fundamentally contradict one another since only distinctly biologically different persons can 'marry' and be 'united' and 'emergency contraception', another two words that fundamentally contradict one another, since you can only contracept before fertilisation of the egg - that it is tempting to think the latter. What we can say, however, is that governments of the world, and ours is most certainly a pioneer in this field, are either lifting ideas from certain concepts from these books or there is a logical and inexorable process underway, in which the government simply must take on ideas from these books, so that society does not collapse totally from within.
You see, whether it is intended or not is perhaps not for us to know. Irrespective, the outcome of the moral anarchy precipitated by liberalism and liberal attitudes towards sex and sexuality gears itself towards the State acquiring more and more power over the human person as time goes by. All I will do is to present readers with the facts so that they may decide for themselves whether we, as citizens of the United Kingdom are becoming more and more an asset of the State to be used and disposed of as the State wishes until we are considered by the State to be found to be useless, or whether the State simply has to take on more and more competences in order to clear up the mess of our selfishness, our moral relativism, our sins and our abandonment of Almighty God, in favour of idols which displease Him and for which the Catholic Church, at any rate, is about to pay a very, very heavy price - Her freedom - and with it - yours - that is, if you follow your conscience and your conscience is informed by the Catholic Faith or Christian morality. Still, as the Manic Street Preachers once sang, 'If you tolerate this, then your children will be next'.
You Can’t Make an Omelette Without Breaking a Few Eggs
There must be some liberals who have a vision of a new society, you see, because new laws are seldom created for no reason whatsoever. Less seldom are they made because its citizens want them. Sad as it is, that simply is not how democracy works. People in power make new laws because they know that this will have some kind of an impact on society. Every politician wants to ‘make a difference’ to society. If they didn’t want to do that then they would not bother to even enter Parliament. William Wilberforce, obviously, wanted to ‘make a difference’ to society and so he did. He had a vision. He helped to end slavery. Lord Steele wanted to ‘make a difference’ to society and so he did. He had a vision. He helped to introduce abortion in the United Kingdom.
And what a marvellous success abortion has been. Well, for some. It has not been a huge success for women and it has not been a huge success for children. It has not been a huge success for society. It has, however, been a huge success for abortion providers. Can you think of anyone else that abortion has been a huge success? I certainly can. The State. Remember that abortion did not come from society itself, but from Government. Like most controversial votes in Parliament, it was not put to a national referendum. You may well protest; “No, that is preposterous. Government does not like abortion. Surely, it sees it merely in terms of a necessary evil in response to those ‘unwanted pregnancies’ and besides which women were campaigning for ‘choice’ and women were dying in backstreet abortions and so something ‘had to be done’ to make it legal.
All that is true and yet, somehow, it misses the mark of why the Abortion Act was introduced. The real reason abortion was introduced into the United Kingdom was the same reason that the contraceptive pill was made available to all British women in the same year - because the State believed that there was a population problem. “No, no, that is impossible,” you may protest, “It was because women wanted choice”. No. Some women wanted ‘choice’, but the State wanted fewer babies being born. Both the pill and abortion are tools of the State to control population. You don’t believe me? Well, I’m sorry but this is simply not rocket science and it is certainly not conspiracy theory. If you make available abortion and artificial contraception to a country then fewer babies will be born. That is just the fact of the matter. Unless you did not want fewer babies to be born, then you would not have introduced it no matter whether your people asked for it or not. And today, if nearly every woman in your country is on artificial contraception and you are averaging 200,000 dead fetuses a year and you do nothing about it, as a State, then I would suggest that either State has decided to go to sleep on the issue, or to look the other way or the State is content to see it happen.
Still unsure? Well, let us turn our eyes to a country now infamous for forced abortion, forced sterilization and, we can safely assume, forced artificial contraception, in as much as it can be forced. That country is, of course, China. Over in China, there were no street protests from women campaigning for rights, since campaigns for rights in China, as we know, tend to be rather short-lived and if women died in childbirth the Government would not give it much of a second thought. There is, in China, a ‘One Child Policy’ and nearly the whole world knows that in large parts of the country, a second child can be forcibly aborted by the State against the wishes of parents. So, why does this ‘One Child Policy’, wreaking social and demographic havoc across the land exist? The answer is, simply, population control.
You still don’t believe me? Okay, well then let us examine the case of Africa. There has been little in terms of documented evidence of a wellspring of women in the continent marching on the streets, demanding abortion from their Governments. Yet, Governments feel entitled to give this service to their people. Though, to be more precise, a great deal of international pressure has been and is being brought to bear on those countries who did not or do not yet have abortion, to introduce it. The UN is constantly seeking to encourage, to put it very mildly, African states to accept abortion. Yes. In Africa, the drive for abortion is not coming from people on the ground, nor necessarily from the Governments, but from interests which are totally external, one of which is the International Fund Planned Parenthood. African women have not asked for abortion, but they have been given it. Advocates of ‘choice’ would argue that African women should have a ‘choice’, but it is still true to say that, as far as I am aware, African women have not risen up to demand their choice and assert their ‘reproductive rights’. No, the ‘reproductive rights’ of African women have been brought to them from the West and by the West. How kind and noble it is of the West to help Africa to destroy its young. Anyone would have thought the West had an interest in enslaving Africa or something.
You still don’t think abortion is about population? Okay, well then let’s examine another country, but this time one which has recently decided to go the other way. Russia. In Russia, it is reported that: (http://en.ria.ru/society/20120214/171313105.html)
‘The Russian Health Ministry has cut the list of social grounds that allow women to have a free abortion, which leaves sexual assault as the only excuse for women to abort their pregnancy. The 2010 census showed that Russia’s population dropped from 145 million in 2002 to under 143 million, with the death rate continuing to exceed the birth rate despite government efforts to encourage Russians to have more children. The parliament may soon pass a new anti-abortion bill that could limit access to abortion services and toughen criminal punishment for doctors who carry out illegal abortions.’
How very pragmatic of the Russian government. Russia is not tightening restrictions on abortion because the government has suddenly discovered its conscience. Nor has the government decided that feminism is balderdash and had a re-think on the woman’s ‘right to choose’. It has merely realized that population has dropped too low and needs to be raised and tightening restriction on abortion is the way to do it.
Let us ask the question, then, why was the Abortion Act (1967) introduced? To understand why the Abortion Act was introduced in 1967, we have to understand the ‘swinging sixties’ in which it emerged from Parliament. As we know, the sixties was the period in which the sexual revolution took place in the United Kingdom. The word ‘revolution’ suggests something violent that takes place that sweeps away an existing order. So, what was swept away? The answer is morality, or, to be more precise, objective moral order according to the natural law. What replaced it? Well, moral anarchy, of course. And with moral anarchy, what else was swept away? The answer is: the institutions of marriage and the family. “Ah!”, you will say, “But the State had nothing to do with the sexual revolution in Britain because this was a youthful movement of swingers and proponents of free love”. To which I can only ask, “Oh. Really?’
Have you ever considered that the sexual revolution would have been impossible had it not been for the mass media and television in particular? Remember that back in the 1960s, the Facebook site that helped lots of young adults to run rampage over London and other cities were just glints in the eyes of their future inventors. There was no internet in those days and without ‘sound and vision’ the sexual revolution would not have taken place. And who brought you the ‘sound and vision’ of the ‘swinging’ 60s and sexual revolution? Why, the BBC of course. What is the BBC an arm of? The State. We know the BBC is an arm of the State because we have to pay a tax to watch it. And do you know what the BBC is for? The BBC is for the State’s propaganda to be disseminated among the population. After all, it was the BBC who brought you The Beatles and it was the BBC who covered the sexual revolution. If the State had thought the goings on all a little ‘risque’ for the British public and had thought that the explosion of sexual energy brought about by the rock and pop bands of the time a danger to modesty then surely this arm of the State would have thought better of encouraging the youth to ‘rebel’.
The BBC was the instrument used by the State to break down the sexual taboos held by the overwhelming majority of British people at the time and what is more the BBC has been used to socially engineer British society and steer it through various cultural revolutions. Through music, comedy, soaps, current affairs, documentaries, films and the vast array of channels open to the broadcaster, the BBC has steered Britain through, as well, the acceptance of homosexuality, abortion, sex outside of marriage and a host of sexually related subjects. Now, of course, it is preparing the country for gay marriage which will be a veritable media coup d’etat, if you’ll excuse the phrase.
The question is, why would the State want to cause sexual anarchy, abortion, contraception, break down the institutions of the family and marriage and, into the bargain, erode and dismantle the Christian heritage of a country? The answer to that, of course, depends entirely on who is running the State and what the State wants from you. It just so happens that, perhaps naturally, the reason the State wants to smash the institution of the family, for example, is because the State wants you to be its loyal and obedient sons and daughters, not those of your mothers and fathers and most certainly not those of God because the simple truth is that if you are obedient to God then you are much, much more difficult to control.
Why was the Abortion Act introduced? As a tool of societal and in particular, population control. Of course, it is a free country and you can think differently. You can think its because the State recognised 'women's rights'. You can think it is because the State cared for women. But that is just what the State wants you to believe. The fact that loads of people now believe what the State wanted people to believe is not surprising. It's called propaganda. The Abortion Act would not have made any sense without the sexual revolution that built up to it, because in order to sell to the people the concept of abortion, the State had to get the kids loosing their inhibitions and fornicating more first, so that the State could close down the 'backstreet' abortionist and move the doctors from the backstreet clinics, to the legal abortion clinics. What? You don't actually think the doctors working in backstreet abortion clinics just packed up, shut up shop and went back home unemployed do you? Heaven forbid! Why let such talent go to waste!
Before the 1960s, if a young man made a young woman pregnant, society expected him to marry her. After the 1960s, if a young man made a young woman pregnant, society expected him to tell her to have an abortion, or for her to think of doing so herself. The sexual revolution had to happen in the United Kingdom so that population could be something manageable by the State through artificial contraception and abortion. If the sexual revolution had not occurred then the institution of marriage would have remained intact and people would have large families like they did in the 'bad old days'. That is called social engineering and that is what the State does best and the drive for 'gay marriage' is just the most recent example.
Ken and Gay Marriage
Ken Livingstone has been quoted as defending to the hilt the 'Gospel according to Stonewall'.
He is somewhat predictable because obviously he is 'playing to the gallery' but then part of our problem is that marriage has, in a real sense, gone from being a sacred institution knitting society together to a rather flimsy legal arrangement that can be unmade as quickly as it is made. Marriage hasn't yet been redefined but in the public consciousness it has lost all meaning. Successive governments have egged on the erosion of the institution of marriage, for reasons known only to them (though we can make plausible suggestions as to those reasons).
As an institution, marriage has done seven rounds in the ring with Mike Tyson and was already severely on the ropes. Gay marriage is merely the knockout blow. Take Ken, for example. He has, according to the Mail, had 'two marriages, one long-term relationship, five children, as well as donating his sperm to a couple of female friends so they could have kids.' It sounds to me like Ken doesn't really take marriage particularly seriously and that's why he's able to support gay marriage - because he doesn't take marriage seriously and neither, of course, do our friends at Stonewall and the overwhelming majority of our parliamentarians. You see, in order to take marriage seriously, it helps rather to take your marriage seriously. Given the donation of his sperm to his female friends, he doesn't seem to take children very seriously either. To Ken, getting someone a child is like getting someone an I-Pad for their birthday. 'Here you go! I knew you didn't have one of these - enjoy it!'
Who knows, perhaps Ken is angling for a gay marriage himself as he doesn't seem to have tied the noose with his current 'partner'. Obviously, there's nothing wrong with suggesting someone might be a homosexual today, because there's nothing wrong or 'unnatural' or 'abnormal' about homosexuality. It's perfectly 'natural' and 'healthy'. So Ken can't sue because if homosexuality is as normal as fish on Ash Wednesday for Catholics, nobody can be offended if someone tells Ken they think he is a homosexual. For the record, I don't think Ken is a homosexual. No, I think he's a womaniser. I'm just making a point.
The proponents of same-sex marriage have to keep us talking about 'equality' because it stops people from talking about anything else. It's become a media buzz word forming the language of irreproachable LGBT dogma. Who could argue with a group of people arguing for 'equality'? Anyone who would argue against 'equality' must be some raving fascist, naturally, and questioning the dogma of 'equality' or the foundations upon which it is built - i.e, the promotion of buggery, mutual masturbation and the sterile lust that a person can share for another member of the same sex - is inherently fascistic and has no part to play in a pluralistic society in which all views are welcome bar those that do not chime in harmony with 'equality'.
In the modern view, men are equal to women, despite their vastly different biology, and so the male-male sexual relationship and the female-female sexual relationship are equal to the male-female relationship. Therefore, heterosexual couples have, for all of these centuries, been 'keeping' and 'hogging' marriage to themselves, greedily, while keeping their eyes out for any gays who might be lurking around who may desire to steal this joyful, if now secular institution, so that it should never pass into the hands of those who are not heterosexual. "Why have heterosexuals got this right!" cries the homosexual movement. "We want the same rights as you! We want marriage rights!"
But who on earth said that marriage is a 'right' in the first place? Even so called 'straight marriage'? The genius of the vociferous, narcissistic gay lobby is that they have created a 'right' where before there never was such a thing. There was no 'marriage right' before the LGBT juggernaut came along. There were 'conjugal rights' certainly, but no 'right to marriage'. And if such a 'right' did exist, people seldom heard about it because in simpler days marriage was, in fact, a solemn responsibility, or even a duty which heralded the end of a man's batchelorhood, the end of a woman's single status and the beginning of a new journey together in matrimony, raising children together. Marriage only becomes a 'right' at the exact point that you decide to change its meaning. Funny that, isn't it?
Sure, the heterosexual couple might have been very much in love - it certainly helps - the day may have been filled with song, celebration, nice dresses, booze and a few tears of joy, but marriage wasn't primarily about a one-off day of celebration. It was about a man and a woman 'pairing off' to live together, to raise children and love one another until the scary man with the big scythe separates them. That'll be Death, by the way, not Trevor Phillips. Marriage was all of these things yet it was never promoted in society as a right. When it had societal or moral value it was less as a right than as a duty. And when the first roaring fires of love died down, this couple would stay together 'in sickness and in health' for 'richer or poorer' because of the sense of duty to their vows. Without a sense of duty, for instance, you could not raise the children who bonded your marriage together even further, crowning your marriage with new life. Without duty, you couldn't forgive habits that become more irritating after the rose-tinted glasses have fallen off after a few years.
Now, the reason that I mentioned IVF at the beginning is that in simpler days while marriage was not thought of as a 'right', so too, neither were children. Though in modern times people insist that they are, neither marriage nor children are 'rights'. You do not have the 'right to marriage'. Marriage is a solemn duty, a public oath, too, involving well known vows, in which a man and a woman voluntarily accept an exclusive and binding, lifelong union in the hope of offspring. The couple have children, hopefully. Those children have children and the parents become grandparents or even great grandparents. That is what makes a family and that is what society is made up of - families - lots and lots and lots of them - not lots of different kinds of them. That is the basis of every human society. The family. The great problem is that the LGBT society do not care about society. They care only about the LGBT society. Corporately, a more selfish and self-serving group of people, you could not possibly meet. They care about their society. Society itself, on the other hand, can go hang, especially if it does not acquiesce with their increasingly fantastical demands.
The idea of children being a 'right' is another act of 'rights' conjury that lends itself to the LGBT community and, in particular, its relentless desire for homosexuality to be uncritically accepted into the mainstream of human society. It can only be the culture of IVF that has given society this warped view of children. Gay and lesbian couples do not merely believe that they have a 'right' to marriage, but a 'right' to children. In particular, they believe they have a right to other people's children since by virtue of their sorry condition they cannot have 'their own'. You do not have a 'right' to children. In fact, nobody does. Every child is a gift, and a gift from Almighty God at that. It is the duty of parents to raise those children and, we would say, to raise them 'in the fear of the Lord'.
What astonishes me is the sneering contempt that Stonewall and the LGBT community have for those who support natural marriage, yet they fail to appreciate that while they may believe that anyone who doesn't recognise their claims to marriage is 'bigoted', that gay and lesbian couples can only obtain children from one kind of sexual relationship and that is a heterosexual one. Whether its through adoption, surrogacy or even in the morally bankrupt world of IVF, a sperm must meet an egg and yet two men only have sperm and two women only have eggs. Whatever homosexuals think of marriage, when it comes to children it will always be a threesome for them, at least. Whatever the method, somehow the union of the male and female reproductive vitals that enable new life to be born are required for their same-sex 'love' to be 'blessed' by children and there is no way, not a screaming tomcat in Hades's chance that homosexuals or lesbians can obtain children without male and female in some way being united. More worryingly, it involves the commodification of children and sex.
In same-sex relationships and marriages, for children to come along, another person of the opposite sex has to be used for their reproductive gift, be it man or woman, perhaps for money. In gay marriage, either the State gives children to you or you have to buy them. How very Brave New World. Whatever it is about, it is not about love. It wouldn't surprise me if one day all men and women are required by the Government to hand over their sperm and eggs so that gays and lesbians can have society's children. After all, not to do so would be 'bigoted', 'homophobic' and 'unequal', so either you masturbate into this vial now, or agree to having your eggs removed now, or I'm sorry, but you'll face either prison or a huge fine. No conscience clause for the religious, obviously, because religious people are just being 'homophobic' if they refuse.
The militant homosexual activist lobby has spent a great deal of time and energy persuading Parliament and society that it must be given 'rights' when, in fact, these 'rights' are non-existent in society. Marriage exists for men and women so that they may, in stability, bring forth children, who then have children and so on and so forth, in order that human society may flourish and so that human society may in fact, continue. That is why marriage - and there is only one kind that is fruitful - is the bedrock of society. I might add, if marriage is such a tremendous and urgent 'right' then how come it is a 'right' that fewer and fewer heterosexuals are taking up now more than any time in the history of the United Kingdom. Perhaps heterosexual couples have taken it for granted and are happier living in sin and fornicating. Meanwhile, those homosexuals want to show them how great marriage really can be when its done in a very alternative manner. Not Christian marriage, but marriage nonetheless, in their eyes.
Anyway, about those children, those children who are society's future. Children are at risk from gay marriage if, for no other reason, they are to be educated in its ways. Why would a State, even a State that has divorced itself from its Christian roots, desire that children be educated about homosexuality in the context of the new respect which will be conferred upon it in the light of the homosexual union's new and glorified position in society, once it has raised to the status and dignity of marriage? Why would the State want to confuse children about down which avenue to walk in their lives, when they are so young and still possibly (they'll be lucky) innocent of the adult world?
Since, in future, both 'gay marriage' and 'straight marriage' will be presented like for like, it seems to me to be obvious that true and natural marriage will be undermined and fatally weakened. Obviously, in this dystopian vision of British life, the teacher will not be able to present one form of marriage as better than another because that would just be 'homophobic' and 'unequal'. If gay marriage and relationships and heterosexual relationships (because actually, natural marriage hasn't been taught in schools for years) are to be treated equally, then the teacher should not be surprised if children experiment first to see which sex feels better. Remember, you have to teach children how to 'do sex' too, on their own, with members of the same and opposite sex too, because that's what modern sex education is. It isn't about marriage and it isn't about children. It's about sex being as recreational as kicking the ball around at break-time.
After all, feelings are what sex and love are all about as far as today's class of children are taught, right? Then, once they've had sex education so amoral that gay marriage (and relationships) and straight marriage (and relationships) are equal in value then the children can take it from there and see how they get along in the exciting world of experimental sex with members of the same sex and members of the opposite sex. Wow! What a candy store the classroom is, eh?! Then, Ms O'Reilly can just go home, put her feet up and know she's done a good day's work, while all the kids are experimenting over whether to be homosexuals or heterosexuals, have straight marriage or gay marriage. If the Catholic Church tried this, it would be child abuse, but when Stonewall campaign for it, its 'equality'.
Yes, I can see the future is bright for natural marriage in this country if gay marriage becomes law. The future's very rosy, indeed. Maybe when the children get past their 30s or 40s, if by some Miracle they haven't got HIV, HPV, or some other horrendous new STI, many of the girls having had multiple abortions each and ending up sticking with other girls instead because they'll know they can't get pregnant with them, there might, might just be a very small minority who will consider natural marriage. But there will be even less then than there are now who realise relatively early in life that natural marriage is ordered towards human happiness as well as procreation and the continuation of the species.
You think I'm being alarmist? I think that that vision is actually rather optimistic. Children need boundaries. You give them moral boundaries when they are young because they will also need them as they get older. If you tell children there are no boundaries whatsoever in childhood or adulthood, you can expect more riots and a seriously, seriously messed up youth that makes even today's appear mild and sensible. In fact, you might just as well go around your neighbourhood with cans of petrol and set fire to it yourselves now.
You may not want the Church's view on marriage now, but you'll doubtless want the Church's help in the clean-up operation when society implodes because children grow up into adults with no moral boundaries whatsoever, because if sex, which goes to the heart of our very humanity, is a game, and marriage is a game, then so is theft and so is setting fire to buildings. You have taught them there are no objective moral values and so they will behave as such. You may as well forget about a future in Britain built on families. Oh, of course, you'll want the Church to help feed the increased homeless population caused by a sex-addicted, psychologically scarred, narcissistic, drug-addled, abused and abusive society full of children and adults from predominantly one-parent families fracturing wider and deeper than Broken Britain already is. Oh well, its your funeral, United Kingdom. Maybe you have to destroy society first before you realise that Britain is more Broken than even Cameron says it is now, because marriage is no longer seen as sacred or something to be treasured.
Or maybe that's all part of the plan, because by that time, of course, not just the Church's liberty will have gone because She can no longer speak out against 'gay marriage', but yours will have gone also, since the only way you can govern a country in anarchic meltdown is by martial law. Then, whether you wanted to be, or indeed not, your life, your very personhood and your marriage and your children really will belong to the State, as well as your sperm and your eggs. See, until it is ready to worship the State as the answer to all its woes all society must be in flux. The forces of liberalism in the State want society to degenerate until it collapses from its own internal contradictions. Society must be brought to its knees by its own internal moral, spiritual and economic collapse. Then you'll hand your very self over to the State. Then and only then will you wish you had listened to the Church, Whose liberty alone acts as guarantor of your freedom against the power of the State.
Is Richard Dawkins the Frontman for the New Breed of Eugenicists?
Every band needs a front man, otherwise the message is never delivered. Every song has a message, whether that song is banal, or indeed, thought-provoking. And, the more I hear from the ubiquitous Richard Dawkins, the more I suspect that the 'new atheism' that he shouts from the rooftops with his own brand of mysterious infallibility is not quite as empty a belief system as I had at first thought. Far from it, in fact, Dawkins is full of belief. Richard Dawkins is a believer. It is what he believes that makes his message so dangerous, rather than what he does not believe which is, as we know, God.
See, Richard Dawkins may be an atheist, but Richard Dawkins is not just any atheist - he's an atheist with a belief system that stems from his own education and expertise in evolution, Darwinism and genetics. His background is biology and, as far as I can see, Professor Dawkins rose to a degree of fame in the United Kingdom mainly through his Royal Institution Christmas Lectures back in 1991. Since then, through his books and excessive media grandstanding, Dawkins has received the ear of the general public of the United Kingdom to an astonishing degree which would be unthinkable for any Churchman.
It is notable that the prestigious Royal Institution lectures have been graced with some big names before Dawkins, names such as the famous eugenicist and British Eugenics Society member, Julian Huxley, the first Director of UNESCO and brother of the author of Brave New World, Aldous. Members of this society, now known as the Galton Institute, have included Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes, John Maynard Keynes, Neville Chamberlain and William Beveridge among a host of other 'luminaries'. Nowadays, the Institute is more coy of its membership. I know, because I emailed them and asked for a list of members, a request which was refused me. However, the Galton Institute's President and Vice President and supporting staff are named on its website and both are eminent geneticists. Given the history of the Institute and its well documented churning out of propagandists for eugenics and those who practiced it in their chosen specialist fields, the names now mentioned on its hierarchy are interesting.
In fact, if you read the list of those who have given the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in the past, mysteriously, some of the same names appear on the list of those who we do know are key players in the Galton Institute. Sir Walter Bodmore is one who has given a Christmas lecture at the Royal Institution. There are others. In fact, there are quite a few. As recently as 2009, Professor Steve Jones, good friend of Richard Dawkins was the President of the Galton Institute. Another sworn atheist and hater of the Catholic Church, Jones is essentially a geneticist and genetics is the field which continues to ‘pioneer’ new research into the fabric of the human DNA – and – therefore, delve into the fabric of society itself.
And in order to understand what Dawkins actually believes, you have to understand the scientific fundamentalism and empirical reductivism which he espouses so vocally. Dawkins is just one man, of course, but he is undoubtedly the voice of an atheistic movement that prizes science and empiricism above all other avenues of human enquiry. In fact, Dawkins’s atheism is not particularly interesting. What does interest me is what he does believe and in order to understand what Dawkins does believe, we have to examine Darwinism and how many Darwinists including, I would suggest, Dawkins himself, apply Darwin’s theories to the human person and to human society at large.
While many credit his Darwinism as his greatest strength, it is, ultimately, Dawkins’s greatest weakness and it is a weakness that must be exposed in order to protect society from the barbarity of the real belief system of this man and a considerable number of his associates, friends and followers. Allow me to elaborate as to why this is the case.
In the years after Charles Darwin’s death, the scientist’s explosive theories were presented as a body blow to the Church and to religions and, up to a point, they were, because the processes of Creation were cast in a new light that caused doubt in the existence of a Creator.
There can be little doubt that Darwinism shook the faith of many especially in Europe and it is an easily forgotten irony that Darwinism, having caused a great loss of Christian faith, also gave rise to an ideology that ran in total contradiction to the Christian faith and that led to the barbaric cruelty of Auschwitz, in which a huge number of men, women and children died at the hands of Hitler’s executioners. This ideology was, of course, Social Darwinism. It was then, and is now, Social Darwinism, rather than evolutionary theory itself, that poses the great threat to human society that we are now seeing ‘through a glass, darkly’ every time we pick up a newspaper.
Evolutionary theory is about examining and explaining how nature works and learning more about it. Social Darwinism is applying Darwin’s theories to mankind with inherently destructive consequences as encapsulated by the phrase ‘the survival of the fittest’.
You see. It is no coincidence that Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes and a veritable army of eugenicists were members of the British Eugenics Society because the Eugenics Society was, and is still, as its name suggests, very much about people rather than plants. Eugenics means simply ‘good birth’. In the minds of eugenicists there are ‘good’ human births and there are ‘bad’ human births. The Galton Institute – to this very day – cherishes Darwin’s theories but more importantly, still – to this very day – applies them to human beings in its lectures and research, available on the internet, in a manner which robs human beings of their inherent dignity as human beings ‘made in the image and likeness of God’.
Historians can point to the various factors that led to the Holocaust which claimed the countless lives of those deemed by the Nazi State as ‘unfit’ for society. They can talk about the terrible economic climate of the day. They can discuss the decadence into which society in the Weimar Republic had fallen and the search for some kind of order. They can talk about the grievances held by the population in the wake of World War I. However, what historians cannot deny is the role that the ideology of Social Darwinism played in the destruction of European Jewry and a host of other people deemed by the Nazi regime as ‘unfit’ for society, including the mentally ill, the handicapped, the homosexuals, those seen as a drain on the economy and all those who Hitler and his supporters saw as ‘unfit’ for society.
With the rise in Social Darwinist ideology and its attending scientific breach in the hull of the Church and the faith of Europe came a movement so cold-hearted, so brutal, so barbaric and so reductivist of the human person and man’s place in the World that the moral foundations of that society collapsed and an extermination process so chilling that it still haunts Europe to this day became possible and executable – and it all came to pass via the powerful arms of the State. Yet, without Darwin’s theories being applied to humankind, it may never have happened at all.
After the horror of the Holocaust, eugenics received a great deal of negative publicity as it became apparent that the ideology that drove the Nazi regime and which was adopted by many in Germany (and other parts of rest of Europe and the USA) had led to human destruction on a hitherto unprecedented scale. Well, it is unprecedented, if you do not count the number of abortions which have taken place in the World since that time.
Eugenics may have received negative press in the aftermath of the Holocaust, but it is blatantly obvious that, just as Nazi war criminals managed to find escape justice and flee to safety in South America, like Dr Josef Mengele, eugenics managed to discreetly smuggle itself into the very fibre of human societies in the West – even those societies like Great Britain – which ostensibly fought the Nazis and their evil, destructive and ruinous ideology. I have already pointed out that this could not have taken place without the sexual revolution and I shall not labour the point, but in order for eugenics to become a part of British life, sexual taboos had to be broken and the fundamental underpinnings of society had to be destroyed. Without the sexual revolution, it would have been impossible for the liberal State to redefine every sphere of human activity to suit its own ends. You could not redefine marriage to include homosexual marriage without the sexual revolution.
You could not liberalise divorce law without the sexual revolution. You could not have IVF without the sexual revolution which separated the sexual act and procreation and as I’ve already said, you could not legalise abortion without the sexual revolution. It was the method by which marriage, sex, personhood, human reproduction, the family, morality, fertility and, ultimately, you and me, could be redefined. The sexual revolution was wholly necessary to placing at the very heart of society, the individual and the State, the promotion of an ideology of a latently eugenic persuasion. Because of that revolution in our understanding of sexuality and fertility, we allowed ourselves to be redefined because of the temptation that was put in our way and, as this essay will assert, as we have sown, so shall we reap,
Why? Because now that every society in the West has been persuaded to voluntarily control our fertility, buy into the notion of sex without consequences, separate children from the sexual act, redefine ourselves along the lines of sexual identity, forget or disregard the true meaning of marriage and the raft of consequences of that revolution, we run the huge risk of moving into a period in which all of these things can pass, even without our notice, into the hands of the State. It doesn’t happen overnight, of course, but slowly, surely, we can see the State asserting itself over matters which, 50 years ago, would be absolutely unthinkable, because 50 years ago, the institutions of marriage and the institution of the family and public morality informed by Christianity was far stronger. That’s not to say that there aren’t Churchmen listed in the British Eugenics Society membership list from yesteryear, but then, sadly, that’s Anglicanism for you.
So, how does this all relate to where we find ourselves today? Well, when His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI came to visit the United Kingdom, His Holiness upset a number of people in the National Secular Society for drawing a link between atheism and tyrannical regimes which disregard the dignity of the human person and destroy those who both the State and society have a duty to protect. He talked of the horrors of Nazism and linked it to atheism which denies objective moral values and thereby takes a subjective view of the value attributable to human beings, made, we would say, ‘in the image and likeness of God’. His Holiness remarked that it is when faith, religion and conscience are pushed to the private sphere and driven from the public sphere that it is then that the objective morality of societies are destroyed. It is no coincidence that His Holiness should have said such things at this time in the history of the United Kingdom because His Holiness can see that the trends taking place in the UK and Europe are only going in one direction.
One man who led the campaign against Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United Kingdom was Professor Richard Dawkins. His letter to The Guardian was published in the days running up to the Papal Visit. My letter was, surprisingly, published the following day, though it was signed by ordinary Catholics, rather than a host of celebrities. One of Dawkins’s other signatories was Professor Steve Jones, the eminent geneticist, atheist and former Galton Institute President. Now, ostensibly, these two figures in British life wanted to arrest Pope Benedict XVI for running an ‘international pederast ring’ called the Catholic Church. I would assert, however, that there is far more to these two men’s deep and violent opposition to the Catholic Church than the sexual abuse crisis.
See, in the modern mind, after years of press reports, the Catholic Church is synonymous with paedophilia, cover up and corruption. However, it also stands for something else and despite the extraneous sins of some of Her priests and members it stands above all for Her Divine Founder, Jesus Christ, of course, but also for the unique dignity of every human person from conception to natural death, ‘from the womb, to the tomb’.
The Catholic Church has a totally and radically different understanding of the definition human person to that which is posited by Professor Steve Jones and Professor Richard Dawkins. These two men are Darwinists and, more importantly than that, they are Social Darwinists. They are, instinctively, eugenicists. Both are on record as holding views on ‘good births’ and ‘bad births’ that are reprehensible to the Catholic Church for whom each and every person, regardless of their condition is to be valued and treated with dignity. Richard Dawkins, as recently as this year, can be viewed endorsing the possibility of infanticide for newborn disabled babies. Professor Steve Jones’s Presidency of the Galton Institute guarantees his eugenic credentials. Why are these things so rarely discussed in the mainstream media? You might well ask, but the media couldn’t possibly comment.
And the reason the media couldn’t possibly comment is because eugenics is fashionable again. Thanks largely to genetics, the NHS and pre-natal scanning, it has experienced a revival in an age which, again, has lost its moral foundations. In the modern media, eugenics cannot be criticized without the left and elements of ‘the right’ calling anything that sounds like criticism ‘hate speech’. Few in the media, for instance, criticize IVF, even though IVF has been widely reported as being explicitly eugenic, in selecting embryos with the right colour eyes, the right colour skin, the right colour hair, keeping the ones that are healthy and destroying all the rest. Only a fantasist could observe these trends and not call IVF what it most assuredly has become – eugenics.
In the modern media, abortion is criticized as eugenic and morally outrageous when it becomes apparent that doctors in London, Birmingham and Manchester are signing through abortion requests for parents who want a boy and not a girl. That’s called gendercide and the Government ‘promises to investigate it’. However, nobody, or very few, will criticize abortion on the grounds of disability, such as Downs Syndrome or even abortions procured for cosmetic reasons such as ‘cleft palate’ and ‘cleft lip’ even though both are operable and curable. We are at a stage in our history when eugenics is such a deeply embedded part of British life that doctors on the NHS express total shock and even dismay when parents tell them that even though they know that their unborn baby will be born with a disability, they don’t want the ‘seek and destroy’ order to go ahead. Professionals in the BMA just don’t understand why any woman or set of parents, wouldn’t want to destroy their unborn child because it is imperfect.
Professor Steve Jones has worked for the UCL where ‘pioneering’ research in human embryology yields few miracle cures for humanity’s ills, but humanity itself is stripped of dignity and farmed in a laboratory and has its DNA crossed with animal DNA to form hybrids in order to find cures to diseases which never appear and all with the blessing of the State.
Both the State and leading atheist and Darwinist, Richard Dawkins, are for all of these things: abortion, IVF, human embryology, eugenics, and, ultimately, the weeding out of the ‘unfit’ from human society by stealth and all with the general approval of the British public. All this has been sold to the British public as ‘progress’ and the British public, while remaining uncomfortable about aspects of all of it, go along with it because we trust our Government with all of these things, even, yes even the power over the creation of human life itself – even human reproduction itself. At the moment, these things – abortion, IVF, artificial contraception and human embryology are undertaken (aside from the human embryos destroyed in abortion, IVF and embryology) on a voluntary basis, but there are signs that suggest that this may not be the case forever.
I would say to you, ‘We had better hope that this extraordinary power over the creation and destruction of human life is not one day used against us,’ but there really is no point, because if you think that these technologies and methods of birth control were designed to just help out the odd childless couple here, or ‘assist’ the ‘reproductive freedom’ of the odd poor, pregnant mother there, then you are, at best, an optimistic and trusting individual of the State or you are a very naïve person indeed and if you think that any State with these kinds of powers is trustworthy then I would say that you are a fool, because ‘power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely’.
Power can be no more absolute than the power to create life and to bring about death. That, after all, as the Catholic Church says and as Professors Steve Jones and Richard Dawkins deny, is the sovereign role not of some mythical ‘sky-fairy’ but of Almighty God Himself. History bears witness to the fact that, regardless of what people say of Him, God is a lot better at being God than men are and when men try to play God, or usurp His role in the giving and taking human life, the results are, without exception, disastrous, especially when the State is involved.
Of course, people like Richard Dawkins will keep talking about the ‘sky-fairy’ and a lack of ‘empirical’ or ‘scientific’ evidence for God’s existence despite the fact that Faith has seldom, if ever, been rooted in graphs and algebra. His media buzz words have to keep being disseminated to the British public, because his agenda and that of his eugenicist friends, is about demolishing Faith in order to carry out a eugenic dream which is, in their minds at least, utopian, but is, in reality, dystopian and a total affront to human dignity. Richard Dawkins has to keep talking about the God that he does not believe in because if he were to be totally honest about what he does believe in, eventually, sane-minded people of Great Britain would turn away from his doctrines in disgust. Ultimately the eugenic nightmare is not about only population control, but total control of the population in deciding who ‘fits’ in and who does not.
‘Ah’, you may say, ‘Well I don’t believe that embryos are human beings anyway.’ Well, if embryos are not human beings, then why are they called human embryos and why is it that the Government so desired that human embryos be handed over to research faculties, companies and a very eager scientific community to be tested upon, stripped of dignity, crossed with animal DNA and abused for the sake of scientific progress, the creation of ‘saviour siblings’ and ‘pioneering’ medical research? If these beings are not human, then what on earth does the scientific community want with them? Ultimately, the scientific community in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act did not want just any old embryos. It wanted human embryos.
‘Well, even so’, you may think, ‘as long as this is happening to beings inside the womb or in labs, then that is okay because it doesn’t affect me.’ My answer to that would be, it may not affect you now, but it will affect you and your children or your children’s children, one day, because one day, if the State obtains total control over human reproduction, which it shall if it remains unchecked, your grandchild may never make it into the World because he or she didn’t have the right colour hair, eyes, skin, or suffered a major or even minor, treatable medical condition because that is where this all ends. The media are always telling you to look after the environment for future generations to enjoy. If you want future generations to enjoy the environment with a measure of freedom, then I suggest you watch what your Government is actually doing in your name, to people, born and indeed, unborn.
In a way, what we are currently seeing in terms of individual ‘freedom’ at the beginning of life, in terms of abortion, artificial contraception and IVF is quite devilish. I say this because, like the Devil, the State has presented these moral evils to the population as services which can be bought, or even obtained on the NHS – an arm of the State – if citizens should choose to do so. As the Church teaches, in return for succumbing to his temptations, Satan drags you into Hell, unless you are repentant. So it is, that likewise the State has presented these ‘services’ to its population in a similar temptation – aimed at taking advantage of the population’s moral confusion, relativism and very human weaknesses. Likewise, for succumbing to these temptations towards controlling the beginnings of human life, the State will eventually drag you into Hell on Earth, because these ‘services’ can so easily become mandatory, should the State decide that it is viable to do so, with the help of a steady stream of propaganda.
The fundamental premise of this essay is that these and other services were made available to the British public after the 1960s so that the British public would become so accustomed to them that, eventually, we would accept them as so integral to the way in which society operates that we would also accept the State’s enforcement of these provisions on us even against our own will.
All that is required for this to happen is enough propaganda through the mass media to soften the population’s position on these matters. An economic crisis, of course, also comes in rather handy - as does hysterical concern for the environment and population issues - for the State giveth 'reproductive freedom' to its citizens, but likewise, the State taketh it away. The same too can be said for end of life issues such as voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide, of course, which is surely to come. We've been here before.
Death: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Catholics used to describe such an end as a 'good and happy death'. In that sense, Catholics are keen on euthanasia - which means 'good death', because while we may require purification after death, our long term vision is nothing more or less than the Beatific Vision of God Himself. That's a good death.
A bad death is the one in which a person dies in a state of mortal sin, unrepentant. Those who die in such a state, according to the Church's teaching, have their state fixed in rejection of God and spend eternity eternally separated from Him in a place we know as Hell.
So, what would constitute an ugly death? Well, actually the ugly death is every death, since death is the worst possible thing anyone can imagine. It is the separation of the soul from the body. It is the end of man's time in this World - the only World to which we are accustomed. A man may, possibly, go through a life knowing few people, he can cut himself off from all social contact if he wills, but he knows the World, for it is all he has known. The other side of the veil, to man, is unknown, and it is the unknown that strikes terror and dread into the soul of man. The end of temporal existence is a horror.
And even God, Himself, not only knows this by virtue of his omniscience, but because the second Person of the Trinity experienced it when He became Man and 'suffered death and was buried'. God, in Jesus Christ, knows the terrible reality of facing death in all its reality. Few, if anyone, would maintain that death is a good thing. Objectively, death is a bad thing - even an evil - despite the fact that it is the just penalty incurred by man in the aftermath of the Fall.
So, if death, it is universally agreed, is a 'bad thing', then why would anyone advocate either suicide or encourage or abett the death of themselves or another? If death, terrible as it is, is an accepted part of human experience, then surely we human beings would desire that death be postponed or that life be honoured or cherished as long as it is possible. Why should anyone desire to hasten death, if it is the least attractive of all human experiences?
Euthanasia enthusiasts, or 'assisted dying' advocates argue that because human suffering, illness, and pain are so horrendous, that a person should be able to choose death over life with an incurable or debilitating disease or illness, or a condition that leads a person to a point at which their life is 'no longer worth living' or a life which is no longer worthy of being called a human life, pointing at the perceived loss of dignity that many conditions bring about.
Yet, hitherto the 21st century, human societies, largely, have held that while sickness, illness, pain, dementia, disability and the range of sufferings which afflict the human race are evils, the worst of all evils is death itself. The idea that the best possible solution to weakness, sickness, illness, disease, suffering and the loss of perceived dignity or purpose, or the ability to be 'productive', or some human imperfection is death has historically been anaethama to the West. The only way in which death has been prescribed as a solution to humanity's ills has been as punishment for a terrible crime. This is true - that is - until Germany became the first country to legalise voluntary euthanasia under the rule of one Adolf Hitler. Aside from this, no other culture or community that has embraced suicide as integral to its philosophy has been widely condemned as the result of an either religiously motivated or pathologically-motivated cult.
So, why should it be considered that the movement in the United Kingdom advocating 'assisted suicide' as the answer to human suffering is any different to the suicide cults which have preceded it, or the voluntary euthanasia programme of Nazi Germany, that paved the way for a less voluntary euthanasia programme of which the World recoils in horror?
The argument proposed in favour of assisted suicide, by such public figures as Baroness Warnock, Lord Falconer and a growing range of celebrities including Terry Pratchett, isthat human beings have the 'right to die'. And who in their 'right mind' could disagree with that? If there is most peole agree with it is the notion that human beings are endowed with certain 'rights'. Some would suggest that these rights come from a Creator, while others would suggest some other source - for example - a benevolent and wise State. And who, indeed, could possibly argue against the 'right to die'? The very phrase the 'right to die' has become a cry for freedom and emancipation from a State that refuses its citizens autonomy over its own personal property - our lives.
Yet, no Churchman, no serious Churchman could argue against the 'right to die', since it is a right that comes to us merely be being born into this World. What someone could question, however, is whether anyone has the right to choose when they die.
Despite the fact that death is the most feared of human experiences, precisely because it represents an unknown state as the end of existence as we know it, perversely is the very reason why advertising it as a 'choice' can be made so appealing. Since because the hour and manner of our death, with the suffering that precedes it, is so frightening, and because it is something over which we humans have no control, if we can at least control one aspect of death - the timing - then it provides us with an illusion of safety, security and controlthat we do not have if we allow it to occur naturally.
And, futher, if we can convince ourselves that the manner and hour of our death are matters of our own choosing - that it can be controlled - then such a 'service' as 'assisted suicide' can even be sold to us, as it has been, most notably in Switzerland at its notorious Dignitas clinics. And being 'sold' it is, under the advertisement 'dignity in dying', a phrase to which we shall return later. But let us first consider where we are.
In order for us to be convinced that we can procure an 'assisted suicide' in good conscience, because such a service we consider our 'right', then we first have to believe that the timing of our own death is our choice. We have, too, to be convinced that our life is our possession. 'It's my life' to do with 'what I choose' is the oft heard phrase.
Catholic theology does not prescribe that as human beings we have no autonomy over our actions or lives. Society is still impressed, for example, by those who risk their lives to safe others. To do such a thing is considered still to be heroic - to show selfless love in risking or laying down your life for another. If a man pushes another man out of the way of a bus and himself is killed then he has sacrificed his life for that of another in order to defend a human life. Similarly, Christ said 'nobody takes my life away from me,' but that 'I lay it down of my own free will'. Human beings have autonomy over their affairs by virtue of our free will. So, we see, then, that the Church has no objection to the idea that we are in possession of our own lives.
But if we are to say that ownership of human life belongs to us as individuals, then we must ask the question: to whom does this life belong after death? It may be 'my life' now, but is it 'my life' after the moment of 'my death', since I no longer exist in the body? Like all human possessions, life, whether you believe in God, or not, is surely only on loan. The Catholic Church posits that, like all human possessions, whether it be an antique, a family heirloom, a favourite picture or a book, life too belongs to a person until death. Like any other possession, ownership of life must pass from the current owner onto another who is in receipt of it.
Whatever way you look at it, we can say 'It's my life' while we are living, but the claim loses all sense and meaning when we are dead since we can no longer claim ownership of even the clothes we are wearing, or the clock on the wall that tells of the time of our death. The clock will remain perhaps far long after we have been there. Perhaps the clock will tell the right time for many of its owners until the End of Time itself, but we? We shall have long gone. Even by objective standards, anyone would think that the clock is more important than a human life since it may well last and be treasured on earth for longer - far longer - than not just the person who owned it, but the memory of a person himself in the hearts of men.
The clock may be passed onto a relative or a third party in this World, but a human life can be passed onto nobody in this World. So, after death, if we can no longer say, 'It's my life to do with as I will', then to whom does ownership of this human life pass? The Catholic Church would say: to the God who made it - to the God who redeemed it - to the God who gave that individual the free will to either cherish it and honour it, or, conversely to dishonour it and to destroy it.
Further, the claim that 'it is my life to do with as I will' is given greater force and gravity by a sober assessment of the statement, since the possibility exists that the one who makes the claim does so knowing that something within himself is immortal. For if I say, 'It is my body, it is my life to do with as I will' and do not believe that something within me is immortal then I appear as a fool, since those around me know full well that while my life is my possession, the lease expires upon my death. It only makes logical sense if I say it in the knowledge that something within me belongs to me, is indeed mine, forever and that wherever it is that I go after death, I will take that 'I', that 'my' with me to that place. In order that 'its my life' make sense I have to believe I am immortal in some sense or that something within me is infinite, despite the fact that my bodily existence is finite. Therefore, the statement that it is 'my life, my body' only makes logical sense if I believe that it is also 'my immortal soul'. Now, you see the distinction, because while a life belongs to a man in this World and all life goes out of a man upon death and returns to his Creator, the Author of Life, the soul too belongs to a man, a soul which either lives forever happily with God in eternity after a period of purgation, or does not.
So, we see now that the claim to assisted suicide upon the grounds that 'its my life' is not so simple as it first appears, when we assume that we can claim it, in some instrinsic sense, forever, and that it is only when we do so that our bold claim makes sound sense. Yet, it is precisely at this point that our argument that we can procure this service of 'assisted suicide' falls down, since if I have a soul, a soul that lives forever, then I would be wise to do what I can to preserve my soul and place my death trustfully in the hands of my Creator, for He has entrusted this gift of life to me for His service and glory. For me to destroy that which He has made, even my own self, who I may either love or loathe, is to destroy that great gift of life which He gave me. Even were we not to have the Ten Commandments which help us very much in this matter - this decision of life and death - then it would be wise for me to pray fervently for guidance in this very important matter, before I either kill myself, or freely allow another party to do it for me, since if I live forever in the state in which I have died, then that decision will have serious consequences for me when I approach the Seat of Judgment which is nothing other than my Conscience in the light of God Himself.
Now, we live in a society which is vastly more atheistic and secular in belief than were previous generations and, as a Catholic, all I can say is that, given what the Church teaches about both suicide and murder as grave dangers to the immortal souls of those who commit them, the best that we can say of those Governments, parts of Governments, celebrities and children's books authors currently considering or promoting the idea of 'assisted suicide' as a potential answer to a host of modern day problems, economic problems, as well as social and societal ills, is that they have not thought them through very well. And, all I have discussed, so far, is the awful reality of death that we must all undergo, for 'after death, comes judgment'. From what I hear of the Church's mystics, even purgatory is a fate worse than physical pain and incurable terminal disease in this life.
We have not yet even considered the huge social ramifications involved in the 'assisted suicide' debate. That will have to be dealt with in the next post. Suffice to say, however, that the trends emerging in the United Kingdom, as well as other countries signalling an interest in assisted suicide, is that both the State and the Media consider that while our right to life is arbitrary and at the mercy of doctors, nurses, mothers and fathers, our 'right to die' could be deemed, in the future, absolutely guaranteed. It was guarateed already, of course, its just the timing that is so crucial.
Death, Dignity and Dystopia
And to recap once more, the attraction of 'assisted dying' or rather, 'assisted suicide', or even voluntary euthanasia, if we are to refuse modern Newspeak, is that we can obtain a measure of control over suffering and our fear of death by at least asserting control over our destiny then we feel more comfortable about death because we can convince ourselves we can master it. We have considered some of the moral and spiritual consequences of the propaganda that surrounds the issue of voluntary euthanasia.
But what does a society that permits 'assisted dying' look like? Well, surely it would look like a society that bears no resemblence to its forgotten Christian past, in days in which the sanctity of human life was defended by both Church and State, for, in those days before the emergence of the 'brave new world', it was deemed that the spiritual or eternal consequences of suicide were to be avoided and that courage, compassion, love, patience in suffering and virtue were to be promoted. Human dignity was to be defended not because it was arbitrary or in the eye of the beholder, but because human dignity was something objective - not something that illness, disease, or suffering could erase from a person. And, for those who believed in the Church and in God, despite trial and physical pain, people believed, rightly that their reward would be in their souls.
Of course, an age that abandons traditional Christian beliefs too necessarily abandons the hope that came with them and, in fact, it is only because we live in a more atheistic age that British society finds itself assailed by a concerted media-driven propaganda campaign to soften its attitudes on 'assisted suicide', since, were it a Christian society, such a message would be rejected forcibly by the public and, presumably, the majority of the politicians who emerged from that society.
But we do not live in that age anymore and we cannot, apparently, 'go back' and if euthanisia is to be born in the United Kingdom, it could well be that it happens because abortion was born first. For what links abortion and euthanasia is the choice of death over life. In abortion, a doctor and a patient choose death for an unborn patient. In euthanasia, were it come to pass, a doctor and a patient choose death for the patient. Both choices are not choices of hope and life, but choices of despair and death and it is despair that dominates societies which have and continue to embrace sin and reject God. It is noteworthy, too, that the growing popularity of the movement for assisted suicide comes after the United Kingdom has accepted and grown accustomed to abortion and other social evils such as divorce and the breakdown of the institution of the family.
Without recourse even to the teaching of the Church, we can say that natural law, which is open to those who follow their conscience in the light of reason, would dictate that divorce, abortion and family breakdown are bad for individuals and all of society, promoting division over unity, death over life, despair over hope. When a society has embraced such social evils as the above, then it is, one could say, natural that despair would reign in that society since the natural bonds that bind together families, communities and individuals break down to such an extent, that unhappiness is the result. Many women, for example, regret their abortions and a number suffer anxiety, guilt, alcoholism and unhappiness as a result - some even taking their own lives eventually.
The natural happiness of a good conscience which arises out of what Greek philosophers would describe as the virtuous life decreases so much in a society that death itself appears better than life because life has become miserable, ravaged by pain, guilt, depression, fear and despair. The United Kingdom is now in its anti-depressant age and many citizens are dependent upon pharmaceutical drugs (as well as illegal drugs) just to 'make it through the night'.
It is only in this kind of society, where not only is God and the Law of God erased from public life, but the natural law is discarded, that a drive for voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide can flourish for once the party is over and the hangover kicks in and the superficial pleasures of the World which brought relief and escape are over, what other form of escape from our condition do we have, but death itself? British society is being brought to its knees, but the population no longer look to God or the Church for the answer, since the answer is unpalatable, salutary and displeasing. And so, sorrowfully, the population begins to look to the State or to others with influence, such as the world of celebrity and the media, for answers.
Dignity in Dying, which was once called the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, would, fifty years ago, have been considered as a bunch of cranks whose agenda was transparently evil because they proposed suicide as the answer to social ills. The organisation had to change its name because, like the Eugenics Society that became the Galton Institute, the Voluntary Euthansia Society became tainted by the Nazi tyranny which embraced both eugenics and volutary euthansia until they stopped asking the 'unfit' it they'd actually like to be killed and just did it anyway. In the 21st century, however, the agenda of Dignity in Dying, which is essentially the same agenda as it was in 1935, is hovering over the United Kingdom and receiving an unhealthy measure of interest. A sufferer of 'locked in syndrome' called Tony Niklinson maintains that his life is "dull, miserable, demeaning, undignified and intolerable", according to The Times (Tuesday 13 March, 2012) and so is campaigning for the right to ask a doctor to kill him without the doctor facing prosecution. Could the phrase 'hard cases create bad law' be any more apt for this discussion? Since, if the State allows 'mercy killing' (another Newspeak phrase among the vast range of Newspeak phrases) in this case, then to whom can the State turn down an application to be voluntarily killed by a third party?
The answer is, of course, that if the level of human suffering and degradation is subjective according to the sufferer, then a loophole in the law allowing the killing of Tony Nicklinson opens up the avenue for many people with various conditions to come forward to be killed in the future since they deem their lives not worthy of being called 'life'. Nicklinson claims he 'does not want to dribble into old age'. Well, who of us would? And faced with 'end of life issues' such as dementia, incontinence, dribbling, chronic pain and incapacity and being dependent on the care of others, Nicklinson's reasons for desiring assisted suicide could be attributable to any of us. Many in old age or who suffer terminal illness face this very reality. The point is that when the State and the medical associations (and the media) and thus all of society endorse Tony's view that his life is 'unfit' to be called life, by killing him, then we have implicitly made the statement that it is not just Tony's view, but it is the view of the State and society. If somebody's reason for being killed by a doctor was summed up in the belief that they do not want to 'be a burden' then as soon as we permit their killing, we have made the declaration that, far from being a loveable person requiring our compassionate care, that the person was indeed 'a burden' on society or was, in some sense, 'unfit to live'.
As soon as we allow for the idea that there are some people who are 'unfit to live', who are 'a burden on others' or who no longer have dignity, but that their only source of dignity is death itself, then we create the framework for a society that believes that death is the answer to the host of mental and physical illnesses present in society at large. Once a State and society has endorsed this idea for a given length of time, it would not be in the slightest bit surprising if that State and that society promoted voluntary euthanasia as an answer to all of those problems. Before very long, you create a society in which anyone can be killed voluntarily on their own assessment of their situation and it does not take a great leap of the imagination to suggest that the movement from individual, subjective assessment of one's own need for death as the escape from illness, disease, or dependence on the State and others for care becomes so commonly assessed as reqnhsuiring death as a 'solution' that the State itself deems death to be the 'solution' to the problem itself and considers itself more able to make the decision about your life, or your death, than you.
But ,'Surely', I hear you cry, 'In the United Kingdom, this could never happen, because not only is assisted suicide still illegal, bar for a couple of High Court cases, but also the framework of law and apparatus to be prepared for the legal, judicially decided killing of those incapable of 'seeing their own need' for the State's intervention in this matter is not yet in place? We're not anywhere near Nazi Germany!' Well, Germany isn't that far away from us and the apparatus is in place. So is the law. The law is called the Mental Incapacity Act and the apparatus is called The Court of Protection, which operates, not terribly surprisingly, in secret. Now, do I have your attention? The apparatus for a 'final' if more subtle 'solution' for the 'unproductive' and 'unfit' in the United Kingdom is in place, but it relies first upon the British population accepting and swallowing the propaganda first and, just as the BBC was used to spread the sexual revolution and the wrecked families and little unborn corpses it left in its wake, the over-turning of the idea that suicide isn't really a 'good thing' is, once again being promoted by the televisual arm of the State.
In all honesty, it is plausible that the Galton Institute which was known as British Eugenics Society, which incidentally has deep links with the relevant Royal Societies (Happy Diamond Jubilee, Your Majesty!) is also on good terms with Dignity in Dying, which was known as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society. What with the abortion clinics started by various members of the British Eugenics Society being well and truly models of commercial and eugenic success in the United Kingdom, one almost wonders if the Dignity in Dying members believe that abortion clinics could actually double up as euthansia clinics. Why build new clinics to kill NHS patients when clinics that kill NHS patients already exist?
Bigger bins would be needed, naturally, though I suppose incineration would be the most environmentally safe way to cull the masses. After all, we don't want more landfill do we? That's 'dignity in dying' and its eugenics too, since the Galton Institute are interested in eliminating the diseased, the imperfect, the 'inferior', the disabled, the weak and 'unfit' before birth using the pretext of 'genetics' via the use of pre-natal scans and, in IVF, pre-implantation diagnosis. After birth, should the imperfect have the audacity to escape the womb, the Dignity in Dying lobby are there to promote the 'end of life' plan once the 'unfit' are born into a society that finds their existence intolerable. That's how you create a eugenic utopia, an apparently 'better world', otherwise known by people who are not pathological fanatics of serial killing, as a State-led dystopia. But there is a better World and in that better World, the 'world without end' dwells the souls of those who fought for our World to reflect the joy, the love and the abundant kindness and mercy of Heaven. Do not let the morbid, deathly, misanthoropic, inhuman State into which we are born sing you to sleep. Defend the sanctity of your life, defend the sanctity of all human life, at all possible cost...
Well, it is none of those things to say that I am a very important person. In fact, every Catholic should acknowledge just what a terribly important person I am.
Why? Certainly not because of any merit of my own and most certainly not because I can sing and play the guitar at the same time (I didn't say well). No. In fact I am largely unemployed and prone to a degree of depression. But I am a very important person and I should like others to acknowledge it only because God clearly thought that I was such an important person that for me He became incarnate of the Virgin Mary and was made Man. For this reason, I know I am an important person and I should like even the State to acknowledge it.
You see. For me, did God assume flesh and blood. For me did the infinite and eternal God dwell on Earth for 33 years in an existence like ours for He was like us in all things save for sin. For me did He undergo a cruel and terrible rejection. For me did He carry the heavy Cross to Golgotha and for me did He die. For me did he destroy the power of Hell and open up the gates to Heaven. For me He rose on the third day and for me did He ascend to Heaven in His Risen and Glorious Body, so that I may follow after death to where He is now, with the Blessed Mother of God and all the Saints in the Blessed joy of Heaven. If, after God has done all that for me, you do not think I am a very important person, then I would say you are not a Catholic.
And if fame were to be something to be greatly desired then all the Faithful should rejoice sincerely for our names are not written across newspapers and magazines, but instead they are, we are told, 'written in Heaven' like the jet stream from red arrows flying across a hopefully blue London sky. Yes, the reality is that, to God, I am a very important person. Obviously, I'm not more important than anyone else, because all people are very important people in God's sight - Catholics and non-Catholics of every race, age, sexual orientation, ability and gender. In fact, not only are you and I so important that Jesus Christ should cross the threshold from Heaven to Earth and from Earth to Heaven, but you and I are so important that we are offered nothing less than union with God Himself, through Baptism and the Holy Eucharist. We are so important to God that He desires that even should we fall away from the love which unites we and He, then He Himself will forgive and renew us through Confession and make us worthy of Him. We are so important that God desires and wills to unite Himself to us and us to Himself. So important to Him are we that the same Jesus gives us His own Body and Blood so that we are given the power and the grace not to live as strangers or enemies of God, but as friends and disciples and lovers of God - not orphans as we perhaps once were - but adopted sons and daughters of the Triune God.
So, why would I say all this: for surely I am preaching to the converted? Surely every Catholic knows this and any potential atheist reader has stopped reading and gone elsewhere? Well, I say this because there is, as we know, a battle going on. It is not just a battle for our souls and the souls of our brothers and sisters inside the Church and outside of Her that we are used to. It is a battle for our very identity and it is becoming now a battle between the State and its allies on one side and, on the other, the Catholic Church and those with a measure of goodwill towards Her teaching in some matters, if not all - yes, even Protestants and, yes, even atheists. What is more, it is a battle which has been brewing for quite some time. So why is there a battle for our identity? Why should human identity be so important? Why should it become a battle ground or even a war?
Well, how we define ourselves, or how we allow others to define our selves pretty much defines and shapes how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. In fact, it pretty much defines everything, even the laws that shape how we are governed. How we define ourselves and allow ourselves to be defined too defines whether we are free human beings or whether we will find that Orwell's vision of a society in which 'slavery is freedom' can morph into a terrifying reality. Orwell's dystopic vision is not of a society in which people are literally in chains working in gulags 24 hours a day while worshipping the State. The point is that the majority of people get and the State get along just fine. The State and most people are, in fact, in perfect harmony. The State, in fact, is more or less God to the people.
In every dystopic vison novel, the State plays a key role in ensuring that most people are contented for as long as people are necessary or productive. Of course, people needed persuading. People had to be convinced of the State's 'truths' in order to renounce their own liberty and give themselves to its service and for this Orwell cites the near constant stream of propaganda that the organs of the State spew forth onto its general populace - a populace which is near, if not totally, global. The message is that you are either in 'the Party' or you are not. If you are not, because you and the 'Party' are in disagreement, then for you, poor dear, the party is over. To enforce conventional State wisdom, Thought Police are required to counter subversive insurgency or bids for freedom of speech, thought and conscience. Entire 'Ministries' are established to oversee the dystopia with comic, if tragic, names, policies and outcomes and a key element in the victory of the State's propaganda machine is the new lexicon, which Orwell calls 'Newspeak'.
The overwhelming majority of the citizens presumably accept this new lexicon - this altering of words and changing of the meaning of words because they are repeated so often that even lies are accepted. Can we see this happening today? The answer is, as Obama fans often used to chant, 'Yes, we can!' Words and definitions are important since they are the method of delivery by which we understand concepts and ideas and the past 50 years has seen a staggeringly high number of alterations and redefinitions of words. And how very interesting it is that so many of the words and definitions which we used to use, over a period of time, came to either be changed or to mean something else or be reconstructed in ways which touch upon the definition, classification and reassignment of us - human beings.
Few plants, animals or invertebrae have been redefined, but we human beings and those issues that touch upon our very humanity and our perception of our humanity most definitely have. So just off the top of my head, here are a few examples: Unborn babies become fetuses. 'Gay' meant happy, joyful radiant, but now means homosexual. Illicit lovers or those living in sin were 'fornicators' but now they're 'partners'. Sodomy is 'gay love'. Drug addiction is 'substance misuse'. Abortion or 'termination' was once deemed to be child destruction in those less 'enlightened' times and both abortion and contraception are now aspects of 'family planning', 'reproductive freedom' or 'reproductive health', 'termination' and abortion after conception has failed can even become 'emergency contraception'. Even war and invasion is, with the UN, becoming a 'peace-keeping mission'. When the State invades a household and steals the children on grounds that can objectively be called dubious it is called 'removing children and placing them into "Care". Always, of course, it is 'in the best interest of the child'. I wonder, was 'sex education' ever called something else, like marriage preparation? A man who believes he is or wants to be a woman is 'trangender'. Who on earth first came up with the phrase 'mercy killing'? What is 'assisted dying' if it is not killing someone if with their consent? How could 'dignity' become associated with the very same idea?
In so many ways, I am sure you can think of more, words and definitions have been changed and, whether they sprang from any grassroots democratic movement originally, or not, the State has most certainly adopted all of these words and definitions that make up a new lexicon of human ideas because obviously it sees some great merit on advancing ideas about human beings and humanity which distort or cover up the previously, long-held and established truth that they conveyed. I'm yet to be persuaded by any argument that posits that abortion is not murder, yet we are constantly bombarded by the idea that it is not because, fundamentally, the State and its allies simply refuse to recognise that a new human being in the womb could be attributed humanity. I'm yet to be persuaded by any argument that such a thing as 'gay or same sex marriage' could even exist because the word 'marriage' means the union of a man and a woman, members of the human race who are different, not the same. In order to argue for it, you have to change the meaning of the word itself which, personally, I think should not be allowed. I'd call the crime 'word destruction' but I'm not in any position of power. What the State says, apparently, is the way ahead - the great leap forward, indeed, and who am I, a backward simpleton who is yet to emerge from the 'dark ages' to understand the State's divine mandate to alter the meaning of words and cast their previous meanings into oblivion?
Except..except, I am a citizen, supposedly of the United Kingdom. I am a human being. First, before anything else I am a human being. I was a human being from the first moment of my conception in my mothers womb. I am just at a different stage of my 'being' than I was when I was 'being' in the womb. One day, by God's grace, I hope to be 'being' in Heaven united to God in the company of all the Holy Angels, the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the Saints because I am also a Catholic. My second 'birth' was at my Baptism at which I was born into a new relationship with God. I hope and pray to God that after my death, I do not suffer the 'second death'. It is possible, though, because despite the fact that I am a very important person to God, I can refuse His love and friendship by turning away from Him through sin. That is because I am a sinner, one who has refused His love in the past and who still falls into sin, on occasion mortal, more often venial, but there by the Grace of God go I, or indeed, not. It just so happens that I have a condition which is now known as 'same-sex attraction'. I freely admit that I am sometimes attracted to members of the same sex as myself. I do not claim to know why this is so. What I have, I freely profess, is an inclination which constitutes an objective moral disorder because I am drawn to be attracted to members of the same sex, in a sexual way, which the law of nature near universally entirely contradicts. Is this my fault? No. It is a fallen World and I accept that because it is a fallen World, I am wounded by Original Sin. Does such a condition mean I could never be a Saint? No, it does not, for the Church proclaims that I am called to embrace the Cross and be close to Jesus and Mary.
So, why am I saying all this? Why am I preaching to the converted? I say this because I recognise that the language used in the above passage is offensive to many in the United Kingdom. It is offensive to the irreligious. It is offensive to the 'gay community' (as if all 'gays' are in the same 'community' - if only they were then the Churches would truly be full of redeemed and truly gay Catholics of Brighton, Manchester and Soho). It is offensive to those who believe that in order to be a true participant and citizen in the United Kingdom, one must abide by certain rules of language. However, I am a citizen of the United Kingdom and until it is declared otherwise or I am silenced, I am free to use this language, whether people are offended or not. I have a right to express my opinion. It just so happens that my opinion is in line with Catholic teaching. That is freedom of speech. I am also exercising freedom of religion. My freedom of conscience urges me on. My freedom of thought gives me inspiration. I also say these things because under the sight of Heaven above, I am allowed to identify myself in accordance with my beliefs, even were my beliefs not to be religiously motivated. I do not begrudge anyone who chooses to identify themselves as 'gay' or 'lesbian'. I have, in my past, idenfitied myself as such. What I do begrudge is growing trend for the language which I have used to be deemed either 'intolerable' or 'intolerant' by the State and its allies.
My point is this: Who gave the State the power to define which of its citizens uses the 'correct' language in the new lexicon and which of its citizens uses the 'incorrect' language? The Church's language is 'intolerant'. The State's language is 'tolerant', aside from the fact that its language and its actions are intolerant of those with beliefs that contradict its new and mighty authority. The authority which is granted to the State is given to it by God. The Church has authority from Almighty God to teach. The State has authority to govern, not to 'reeducate' people and stamp out their 'outdated' beliefs. Only totalitarian regimes do that. Why, I ask you, does the State have the authority suddenly to redefine words, meanings of words, human institutions that pre-date it and call any opposition to its agenda 'bigoted' and 'intolerant', but as soon as any dissent is raised to its style of governance, those people's rights to freedom of expression are questioned and they are painted as gross malefactors? What makes the State's view of 'truth' more valid or credible than the Truth proclaimed by the Holy Church of God? The State's message is not more credible or valid, it is simply different to that of the Church and apparently more popular than that of the Church. It has been made popular by years and years of media-channelled secular-atheist-liberal propaganda aimed at the lowest and basest aspects of our human nature. Yet, the power of that propaganda means that in just half a century we have experiened:
The redefinition of human persons - who is and who is not, the redefinition of marriage, the redefinition of child murder, the redefinition of war, the redefinition of the destruction of family life, the redefinition of human identity along purely sexual lines, the redefinition of unnatural sexual relations, even unions, the redefinition of sex outside of marriage, the redefinition of 'equality', of 'fairness' of 'tolerance', the redefinition of the killing of the vulnerable, weak and sick, the redefinition of even 'welfare', of 'planning to have a family/family planning' and, with the advent of IVF, the redefinition of human reproduction itself. Truly, this is a veritable brave new world and these redefinitions have altered, in the popular imagination, society's view of so much that touches on our humanity.
That nearly all of this is readily sanctioned and endorsed by the State is terrifying, not because the State has merely abandoned the God of Christianity, but because the only State that does all these things in the name of a new 'progressive' vision of mankind brought under its unyielding power is the State that believes that, far from being some kind of 'shadow' of God on Earth, it is, indeed God! A god that demands loyalty, obedience, fear and while it cannot yet elicit love, unquestioning approval and nearly totally passive, indifferent electorate. Now that so few men actually believe, 'being God is a dirty job, but hey, someone's got to do it'. Best leave it to the State, eh? Because with CCTV and modern technology, its becoming 'omnipresent' and fast. But first, all the opposition must be crushed since two infallible, mutually contradictory versions of the truth can never happily co-exist.
The Almighty God, because of all that He has done for me, gives me an identity which makes the State's and its notorious allies' official version look cheap, vulgar, insulting, patronising, dehumanising, demeaning, undignified and crass. I may be a man with same-sex attraction. I am certainly gay. I may be a sinner. But, I'm Laurence England and as things stand I am a free man. I am a child of God. I am raised to a dignity which no man can ever take away from me and who knows, maybe one day, I and others like me, we, yes we may be Saints, because those who stand against the tyranny of relativism and the creed of liberalism and the State that extols the virtues of both, may yet be honoured with a new and glorious title: the enemies of the State. Oh, what a wonderful time it is to be a Catholic in the United Kingdom, but, that said, it looks like Protestants and even some atheists should prepare for Room 101 as well. That should make for an interesting prison chat!
By the way, I see that the BBC report on Turkey and the Prime Minister's attack on abortion failed to mention his personal assessment of the practice as a tool of population control. The BBC report only mentions that he worries that the population is declining. Funny that. I wonder: Why would the BBC not report what he actually said? After all, the UN has never had any problem with encouraging 'population control' while simultaeneously advocating 'reproductive healthcare' for countries across the globe. Why are the BBC so coy about it?
