Some Reflections after NFP Awareness Week 2009

As a consequence of the so-called “Sexual Revolution,” people adopted the dopey notion that they had benignly uncoupled sexual activity from marriage and pregnancy. Particularly since the arrival of the birth control pill in the late ‘50s, we have witnessed profound cultural changes. We have seen the growth of a hideous disrespect for human life, along with increased sexual crimes against women, astronomical STD rates, & the scourge of pornography. There have been devastating impacts to marriage & family. To be blunt, anyone who would deny this is a fool....

*While ready availability of contraceptives has always been promoted as a supposed panacea for "unwanted pregnancies,” it has instead been connected to increased abortion rates!

• The CDC reports that one of every three pregnancies ends in an induced [surgical] abortion <www.cdc.gov/nchs/releases>.
• Of each week's 146.5 thousand abortions in the United States, about 82% are via chemical & mechanical - rather than surgical – means (based on extrapolated data from Pharmacists for Life). Certain so-called “contraceptives” can actually operate as abortifacients.

*In the past half century, the rate of forcible rape of women has tripled:

• In 1960, there were 17,190 forcible rapes of women (9.6 per 100,000 people)<www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm>.
• The FBI now reports 92,455 annual forcible rapes of women (30.9 per 100,000 people) <www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/data/table_01.html>.
  

*There are now 56 times more new STD infections each year, than there were overall STD infections in 1957:

• As per the Centers for Disease Control, 340,687 cases of STDs were reported by state health departments in 1957 <http://wonder.cdc.gov/wonder/STD/OSTD3202/Table_1.html>.
• Currently, “The CDC estimates that 19 million new [STD] infections occur each year, almost half of them among young people ages 15 to 24” <www.cdcnpin.org/scripts/std/std.asp>.

*As reported in Bishop Robert Finn’s February 2007 pastoral letter, “Blessed Are The Pure In Heart” <www.diocese-kcsj.org/Bishop-Finn/pastoral-07.htm>:

• “U.S. porn revenue exceeds the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC (6.2 billion). Porn revenue is larger than all combined revenues of all professional football, baseball and basketball franchises. The pornography industry, according to conservative estimates, brings in $57 billion per year, of which the United States is responsible for $12 billion.”
• “There are 100 thousand websites offering illegal child pornography (U.S. Customs Service estimate).”
• “Child Pornography generates $3 billion annually.”
• “70% of 18 to 24 year old men visit porno-graphic sites in a typical month. 66% of men in their 20s and 30s also report being regular users of pornography.”
• “One out of three visitors to all adult web sites are women.”
• “Eleven years old is the average age of first Internet exposure to pornography.”

*While some people still try to insist that pornography is a “victimless” crime, the U.S. State Department’s “Trafficking in Persons Report 2007” indicates otherwise <http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/global_issues/human_trafficking/traffick_report.html>:

• “Annually, according to U.S. Government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80 percent of transnational victims are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors. The majority of transnational victims are females trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation.”

*Over the past half century, Americans have become less likely to marry. Of those fewer who do marry, they are more likely to divorce:

• In 1957, there was a marriage rate of 8.9 per 1000 people <http://thecommunityguide.org/nchs/data/series/sr_21/sr21_010acc.pdf> and a divorce rate of 2.2 per 1000 people <www.divorcereform.org/03statab.html>.
• Currently, there is a marriage rate of 7.4 per 1000 people and a divorce rate of 3.6 per 1000 people www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_01.pdf.
  

*As per the current Time Magazine,

• "There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage. It hurts children, it reduces mothers' financial security, and it has landed with particular devastation on those who can bear it least: the nation's underclass....
• "The poor and the middle class are very different in the ways they have forsaken marriage. The poor are doing it by uncoupling parenthood from marriage, and the financially secure are doing it by blasting apart their unions if the principals aren't having fun anymore....
• "on every single significant outcome related to short-term well-being & long-term success, children from intact, two-parent families outperform those from single-parent households. Longevity, drug abuse, school performance & dropout rates, teen pregnancy, criminal behavior & incarceration — if you can measure it, a sociologist has; & in all cases, the kids living with both parents drastically outper-form the others....
• [As per] "David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values....: 'Children have a primal need to know who they are, to love and be loved by the two people whose physical union brought them here. To lose that connection, that sense of identity, is to experience a wound that no child-support check or fancy school can ever heal'....
• "is marriage an institution that still hews to its old intention and function — to raise the next generation, to protect and teach it, to instill in it the habits of conduct and character that will ensure the generation's own safe passage into adulthood?" <www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1908243,00.html>

As per the USCCB,

• "among the People of God, there is confusion, ignorance & misinformation about Church teachings on human sexuality, chastity, marriage, conjugal love, responsible parenthood, & the moral regulation of births" <www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/nfp/nfpweek/09_Homily_Notes.pdf>.

While the state of marriage in the United States could tempt us to despair, we were reminded again last month that the Church has the Truth, to remedy all of our ills!

• "The Church forcefully maintains this link between life ethics & social ethics....we are called by the prospect of a world in need of profound cultural renewal, a world that needs to rediscover fundamental values on which to build a better future....
• "Openness to life is at the centre of true development....The acceptance of life strengthens moral fibre & makes people capable of mutual help....
• "The Church, in her concern for man's authentic development, urges him to have full respect for human values in the exercise of his sexuality. It cannot be reduced merely to pleasure or entertainment, nor can sex education be reduced to technical instruction aimed solely at protecting the interested parties from possible disease or the 'risk' of procreation....
• "there is a need to defend the primary competence of the family in the area of sexuality...and to ensure that parents are suitably prepared to undertake their responsibilities. Morally responsible openness to life represents a rich social and economic resource.
• "Populous nations have been able to emerge from poverty thanks not least to the size of their population and the talents of their people.
• "On the other hand, formerly prosperous nations are presently passing through a phase of uncertainty & in some cases decline, precisely because of their falling birth rates....The decline in births, falling at times beneath the so-called 'replace-ment level', also puts a strain on social welfare systems, increases their cost, eats into savings and hence the financial resources needed for investment, reduces the availability of qualified labourers, & narrows the 'brain pool' upon which nations can draw for their needs….smaller & at times miniscule families run the risk of impoverishing social relations, & failing to ensure effective forms of solidarity....
• "It is...becoming a social and even economic necessity once more to hold up to future generations the beauty of marriage and the family, and the fact that these institutions correspond to the deepest needs and dignity of the person....
• "It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational systems & laws do not help them to respect themselves....
  In vitro fertilization,
  embryo research,
  the possibility of manufacturing clones and human hybrids:
  all this is now emerging and being promoted in today's highly disillusioned culture, which believes it has mastered every mystery, because the origin of life is now within our grasp....How can we be surprised by…indifference shown towards situations of human degradation, when such indifference extends even to our attitude towards what is and is not human?
• "What is astonishing is the arbitrary & selective determination of what to put forward today as worthy of respect. Insignificant matters are considered shocking, yet unprecedented injustices seem to be widely tolerated. While the poor of the world continue knocking on the doors of the rich, the world of affluence runs the risk of no longer hearing those knocks, on account of a conscience that can no longer distinguish what is human.
• "God reveals man to himself; reason and faith work hand in hand to demonstrate to us what is good, provided we want to see it; the natural law, in which creative Reason shines forth, reveals our greatness, but also our wretchedness insofar as we fail to recognize the call to moral truth" <www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html>

The Holy Father's words are so beautiful, incredible, and timely! Married couples who adhere to the Church's teaching about marital relations are receiving incredible blessings - evidenced by a miniscule divorce rate.