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Quote of the Day: An Offense God Will Bear No Longer
In his second inaugural address, Lincoln’s spoke of the sin of slavery and quoted the Gospel of Matthew as to the suffering sin brings: “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh” (Matthew 18:7).
Of course, Lincoln was speaking of the wages of slavery paid out in the first American Civil War. Anthony Esolen, my fellow Catholic, doesn’t identify what he thinks is the root of our current internal hostilities in his piece, No Common Love, No Common Life, but I think he wouldn’t argue with me when I contend that God is letting us pay the price for sexual sin, particularly that which culminates in the mass slaughter of innocents through legalized abortion. “What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace.” — John Wesley
We’ve come a long way, baby.
What did we, as a society, expect would come of sex without consequences? — what adherent Catholics call, “the contraceptive mentality.” If the conjugal act isn’t a unitive and (potentially) procreative cooperation of a married couple with God’s creative enterprise, well then, what is it for? Evidently we’ve answered, “it’s whatever I say it’s for, no matter who gets hurt as a result.” Woe to that society by which the offense cometh. Sixty million dead and no end in sight.
You might say our current division is political and not really about sexual morality. But my contention is the radical individualism and lack of a more widely shared view of sexual morality that comes with the contraceptive mentality is certainly a potent source of embitterment. It shows up in every Republican Supreme Court nomination where Roe v. Wade might be overturned!!
I’m not one to point fingers at anyone on this matter. I have my own sins to account for. My point is related to Esolen’s: no common love, no common life. This lack of unifying moral thought isn’t something America had to overcome post-Civil War. The American conscience had been pricked by the devastation of the conflict and by the country’s failure to obey Jesus’ commandment to “love thy neighbor.” As Esolen says,
Sometimes only calamity can do it. In every village and town and city in America, every Sunday, the words of Jesus were heard, and many were the old slaveholders and soldiers of the Confederacy who did take them to heart, regardless of what their worst enemies to the north said about them; and the best of the old abolitionists in the North, not so many as we should like, came down from their moral high horses and did hard and honest work for the black men they had helped to set free. Perhaps they remembered that no man is free from sin. On that dread day of judgment, the saints themselves shall tremble, as the sober old hymn rightly says.
. . .
But here I should recall my own observation. What needs to be explained is what the reconcilers did, not what the fratricides did. What but the grace of God can move a man to love his enemy? But what happens when a formerly Christian nation forgets the reality of sin and our desperate need of grace? What happens when there is nothing left to lift the souls of men to a realm wherein they leave off their strife, and stand abashed before the justice and mercy of God?
Indeed. Abortion is paramount in this election, since it is life that is the very ground of our views of God and man and the preciousness — or expendability — of all human life which shapes our consciences and, therefore, our actions. And, for many on both sides, it determines our votes. The life issue is an irreconcilable difference between Left and Right, and the United States will either become all one thing or all the other. We will either adhere more faithfully to the founding principle of the right to life for all equally God-created men, or we will carry on as the most radical abortion regime in the world. And, if the latter, I believe this house will fall.
Published in Group Writing
When a lot of people are out there “shouting their abortions,” I suspect the latter.
This is the Quote of the Day. We have plenty of openings this month if you would like to share a quotation to educate, honor another, celebrate yourself, brag about your new acquisition, or just so you can rant. Our sign-up sheet is here.
Or, if you’re looking to write something a bit more creative, you might try our Group Writing Project this month: It was a dark and stormy night…
So what your saying is that we should invest in sex robots to prevent abortions?
You and your sex robots, Henry! I’m laughing, but I know you’re sorta serious.
No, sex robots are not the solution. A return to Christian sexual morality, understanding human nature and the higher purpose of things is the only hope, and not coincidentally the path to human flourishing for both individuals and society.
My future obsessive response to your sex robot obsession will be: So we should propose a Christian monarchy in place of atheistic, totalitarian socialism to address our social ills? And I’ll be semi-serious too.
Why a monarchy? Can’t the Hebrew Bible be reasonably interpreted as being against monarchy.
Eh, it’s my fantasy, don’t make me think about it too much.
The abortion issue aside, if Biden wins, we are destined to fall as all formerly great civilizations have for one reason or another. The more we make this election about abortion, the more women will leave the Republicans in droves, at least according to the polls. Abortion is settled law, and we might as well accept that it is. The only thing left is for the individual states to limit how far along in a pregnancy abortion can be allowed. Most states have already made the decision to limit it to around four months. Depending on the source, eight states allow abortion up to nine months, but even those states permit it only if the mother’s life is in danger or the baby within the womb has died or has a fetal abnormality complicating the birth.
Better yet: revive the Holy Roman Empire and crown a new Christian emperor.
Well I doubt that we could make the Holy Roman Empire, neither Roman nor, holy, nor an empire. So pretty much the same?
Your quote offered sexual sin as the “the root of our current internal hostilities,” and possible downfall as the price of it, but others cite materialism, disdain for the planet, and other main sources. There are just too many subsets of issues that feed into the great umbrella of the hostility. Thinking it is mainly centered on sex reminds me of Freud vs. Jung who found far more threads to the human condition.
I’m thinking about how Jane Fonda recently rejoiced in the possible role of the virus “tearing the mask” off of Trump to show everyone beyond a doubt that he is a monster, in short. I just don’t think God works that way. Beyond just the ridiculous use of God in her thoughts (when he’s handy) while others just see a continuing leftist portrayal of how well some other leader would have forced some other response (ie. a dictator the left dreams about)….there is just the issue of God sending HUMAN badness to respond to human badness. It is tempting to think of things like natural forces can show a displeased God, then guessing at what He is trying to say. A Jane might say His hurricane beams are on Texas for being conservative but then what about His fire beams on California? Each side can use those tragedies. Our own living as big populations in perilous zones might be closer to the cause.
But it’s something else to say that an invasion under another government with a power lust or misplaced sense of insecurity or crusade to distract its own population is a God-plan to show another population something God wants to say about their own imperfections. Likewise domestic division. Is God responsible for human based blindness or human generated shortcomings – or downright evil? There is the eternal question of why God lets evil roam the world, but to say he puts our imperfections into place, then weaponizes them hoping for the right “interpretation” to flow out, is not the kind of thinking that settles anything human or enhances our understanding of God, who we drag down to our level with that approach. Apologies to Old Testament writers. It’s one thing to think God lets us learn, another to say He arranges divisions and disasters. Maybe His reaching into history to simply prevent the chaos moments wouldn’t teach us at all, but the caused-by-God theory seems far too flexible to teach us much. In the dust that settles each time, it seems like there are plenty of embers for the next round of conflict and assorted interpretations.
I rejoice that she rejoiced, tearing off the mask and showing everyone that Jane Fonda is every bit the evil little comsymp that she was back in 1972.
Where did I say the current division is God-caused? I was speaking to human sin and, if anything, God’s permissive will, not His sovereign will. We are responsible for what’s happening to us. We have eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and decided that “thou shalt not kill” doesn’t apply to pregnant women who don’t want their babies (not to mention the sperm donors who encourage them to abort). We’ve rejected God’s moral code and written our own with all its twisted emanations and penumbra. It will not end well. It already hasn’t for 63 million and counting.
All the other sins of the world are tangentially related to the life issue, which is about understanding what people are for. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, the purpose of human life is to know, love, and serve God. That makes the destruction of innocent life central. Materialism and disdain for the planet spin off from there.
I don’t believe that’s true, but even if it is, Ethics 101 says that good cannot come from evil. It’s hard to convince leftists who so firmly believe in the Big Lie — the ends justify the means — because it has been shown to “work” on fallen human beings, sadly.
Also, young people have been steadily moving toward the pro-life position for decades now. Most people want some restrictions. The Democrat party is radically pro-abort up-to-and-including the post-natal infant. Otherwise known as “infanticide.”
And that’s the thing pro-aborts don’t want people to know — overturning Roe (and Casey) would return abortion law to the states. Most pro-lifers are good with that, because it’s easier to work in your locality to change hearts and minds than it is at the national level. Overturning Roe would not outlaw abortion.
And from what I’ve read, and I could be wrong, the America advocates and exports abortion services to third-world countries. So it’s not just us that are harming ourselves, but we are harming others.
It’s a stain as corrupting as slavery.
I’ve noticed for some years that it’s Democrats who first raise the Roe v Wade issue in every election. Why is that? Common sense tells me they know that by making the GOP seem like they are against a woman’s right to choose, many of those women will vote Dem.
Strict constructionists are against Roe v Wade because it was wrongly decided on a right not mentioned in the Constitution. The Supremes should never have heard that case and returned it to the states where it rightfully belonged. Unfortunately, that is not what happened, and we are where we are.
Making us a one-issue party will only result in moving more women left and Democrat wins which will result in a society where traditional values and a belief in God have no place.
Not confronting the issue makes us irrelevant.
True only if you think we are a one issue party. I have been a Republican for more than 50 years, before legalizing abortion in the US became a serious political issue. Oddly enough, in 1967 the first state to legalize abortions under certain circumstances was Colorado under a male-dominated Republican legislature and signed into law by a Republican governor. We have never been afraid to confront the issue, but to make it our primary issue is a serious political mistake, one the Dems are only too happy to encourage.