The Gift Of Life

In reaction to the spread of abortion, there have developed organizations referred to as Right to Life organizations.
Strictly speaking there is no right to life, inasmuch as life is a gift given to each person by the Creator, not something one can claim as a right.
A gift can vary greatly in value, from minimal to inestimable, depending upon the importance of the giver and the purpose of the gift.
In this case, the gift is inestimable because the Giver is the all-powerful Creator and the purpose is to create persons destined to share in the Divine Nature.
Whenever a gift is given, it carries a specific formula for correct use : a micro-wave, a car or a sewing-machine is to be used by following specific instructions provided by the makers.
In the same way, the gift of life carries a formula that determines how it is to be properly used : it has to be used in the way prescribed by the Creator, i.e. it must be accepted and used so that man will know, love and serve God on earth and thus qualify to eventually share in His divine nature.
When a woman uses unnatural methods of contraception, she, in essence, tells God that she does not want His gift.
When she aborts a pregnancy, she not only rejects the gift but even destroys it as being worthless or a nuisance.
What Right-to-Life organizations are really defending is not a right to life but a right to continue a life already begun, a right to defend and protect a life already received as a gift from God, a gift of inestimable value for the reasons above given.
What the State does, in Roe-v-Wade, is tell all women that it is permissible to reject this priceless gift from the Creator.
What a frightful challenge to an all-powerful God who is also all-Just.!

Abortion:
The term abortion applies to the deliberate, direct and intentional killing of an innocent, living human being, not yet born.
Most people who support abortion apparently have no idea of the part that God directly plays in the genesis of that specific human life, how that life is there because of a specific decision that God made to produce that specific life.
No act of intercourse carries a guarantee of new life.
The fertilization of an ovum following a sexual act is not something either person can ordain.
Neither can it be the result of chance occurrence.
Clearly, it is a result of a decision of Someone of awesome power, who at that same time instills into that being an immortal soul of Intelligence and Free-will.
Jeremiah 1-5 said “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you : and before you were born I consecrated you”
What a terrible intervention by mere creatures into God’s awesome territory of creation - ‘Fools indeed rush in where angels fear to tread’

The US legal system, in it’s act of supreme arrogance, with Roe v Wade, states that every woman has a legal right to abort her child. The child has no legal right to be born : only the mother’s wish operates.
It logically follows that no one has a legal right to be born, to receive God’s gift.
If no one has a legal right to be born, to exist, then all the rights that society has heretofore recognised as inalienable human rights based upon a right to preservation of life, have no fixed basis and can properly be taken away by the State or anyone with the physical power to do so.
That would logically apply to all of us, already born and matured.
The State could justifiably decree that no one should conceive or bear a child, that no one has a right to marry, to establish a family, to expect remuneration for work performed, to own property, to be protected from criminal or foreign attack or enjoy any of our heretofore inalienable human rights.
One would logically have no rights other than those conferred by the State or the powerful, at their discretion or at their pleasure, rights which can be as easily taken away as conferred.
If no one has a legal right to be delivered in safety, to exist outside the womb, then life itself becomes truly expendable.
Life would be lived fully dependent upon the whim of the State’s legal system. Society would operate with the mindset of the Nazi and Communist mass murderers of the last century.
Yet politicians and media persons can state indignantly that controversies on ‘social issues like abortion’ distract the people and government from attention to ‘more important problems’ such as the economy, jobs etc.
What pitiful fools.!

Since Roe v Wade, we have and are witnessing this legalized barbaric slaughter - carried out by physicians who are supposed to be dedicated to preserving life - of millions of helpless unborn infants.
Their mothers, by nature designed to be their protectors, have become their deadly enemies.
We hear many reasons put forward in attempted justification of abortion.
“ It will reduce the incidence of criminal abortion “ Of course it will, if all abortion is made legal.
“Abortions can now be performed in safety”. This is not true. We hear of more and more medical malpractice cases following abortions carried out by unscrupulous, incompetent and unfeeling physicians.
“It will reduce the mental anguish of unwilling and often unwed and very young mothers “. A mental anguish of greater degree will follow abortion in many mothers.
“ It will prevent the arrival of infants with congenital and hereditary defects with all the resultant mental anguish and high expense of caring for them.”
“ We can clean out the gene pool of the future of genetically-derived diseases if we now prevent or abort pregnancies in all carriers of defective genes.”. So we should 'search and destroy'.

Some of these reasons may in themselves appear good but in no way do they justify the taking of an innocent human life, worthless as that life may appear to some.
Abortion has been legalised on the basis of a cold, calculated pragmatism in which the outcome is used to determine the rightness of an action.
Many crimes - individual, social and governmental - have been committed on this basis, that a good end justifies a bad means.
Almost all the wars of history, the barbarities of the French Revolution, of the Nazi and Communist Revolutions in our own time, have followed from adherence to this invalid concept.
When an act is intrinsically evil and against the nature of man, no reason given can make it good.

Many proponents of abortion say that a mother has the right to do as she wishes with her own body. Those who hold this view are wrong and should realise that no one has a right to dispose of one’s own body, or healthy parts of it, which we hold in trust to the Creator : this would be mutilation.
Furthermore, it can easily be shown that abortion does not concern the mother’s body or a part of it. It deals with and destroys another’s body - a body unique and totally distinct from her’s. The infant’s body is within the mother’s body but is not part of it.
The life within her womb is human, distinct and unique.
It is human because it’s genetic system comes from male and female human genes and on that basis alone cannot be regarded as other than human.
The life within is distinct from the mother’s, in that it’s genetic endowment comes, not only from the mother but equally from the father : the combined genetic make-up is mixed maternal and paternal and cannot be regarded as purely maternal. Many infants have blood types different from the mother’s, proving the essential dissimilarity between the mother and baby.
It is unique, in that even at the 3-cell embryo stage, it’s genome has less than a one in one billion chance of being reproduced in some one else.

The infant is not the mother’s property for her to use as she thinks fit.
It is a gift given to her in trust to be cared for and directed to it’s true ultimate end. The mother is merely the guardian and custodian of that new life and bears a tremendous responsibility for it until it reaches maturity and physical and moral independence.

In-Vitro Fertilization:
Some misguided or deliberately misguiding theologians are propagating the concept of a ‘pre-embryo’ period consisting of the first two weeks after conception, when the embryo has ‘not yet become ensouled’
This concept is being used to pave the way to producing millions of human embryos by in-vitro fertilization, for experimentation during that first two weeks, following which the embryos will be discarded, totally without respect for the sanctity of their lives.
In in-vitro fertilization, six ova are extracted from an ovary by laparoscopy and all are fertilized in vitro, almost always using semen acquired by immoral means and often without regard to or recording of the identity of the donor. One fertilized ovum is now chosen to be used in implantation into a women’s uterus. The remaining fertilized ova are placed in cold storage and simply discarded as refuse if the procedure is successful with any of the first chosen ones.
In-vitro fertilization shows an intrinsic connection with unnatural contraception : one is sex without babies while the other is babies without sex.
What a moral and legal quagmire we are faced with in this type of activity.
It is yet another example of anti-life action proclaimed as a marvellous breakthrough of science on behalf of those who greatly desire to have a child.
What crimes are committed in the name of compassion !
The Church insists that man, the person, from conception to natural death, can never be used as a means but always and only as an end and cannot ever be involuntarily sacrificed in his integrity for the benefit of another.
Furthermore, the Catholic Church has never and will never accept the concept of embodiment without ensoulment. She teaches emphatically from Revelation that the soul is present at the first moment of conception.
Thus all embryos from conception are persons within the Christian meaning of the term and as such, are destined for everlasting life and therfore deserving of human dignity.

Euthanasia:
The anti-death forces, flushed with their victories at the pre-born level, now direct their satanic fury against the other end of life’s spectrum.
As with the euphemism of pro-choice, they employ the euphemism of ‘euthanasia’ for the premature killing of the elderly and those suffering from terminal illness.The word euthanasia means happy death. What cynicism! They call it happy death when what it really is, is death without hope, death in despair.
The secular world proclaims that there is nothing beyond the grave : ‘you’re no longer of any value : why put up with pain or the boredom of waiting to die : you’re going to die anyway so why not get it over with and ease the burden on your family.’
Christ proclaims that everlasting life waits beyond the grave for those who are faithful. He proclaims that every person is of priceless value.
He asks those of us in pain or suffering to come and help Him carry His Cross and then to share His victory.
He says “ My yoke is sweet and My burden light” and again, “Come to Me all you who are heavily burdened and I will refresh you” :
He says that everyone will die but that only the Creator can decide the time. He says that watching and helping and trying to alleviate the suffering of loved ones brings out and demonstrates the love we have for them and that we should not view the dying as a burden upon us.

Marriage Witnessing Authority

The Witnessing Authority presiding over the contraction of a marriage is the only one that should have jurisdiction over it’s possible dissolution, whether such dissolution is canonically valid or not.

I see the following possible categories -
1 - Catholic marriage
2 - Protestant “
3 - Jewish “
4 - Moslem “
5 - Secular “
Various mixed marriages of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Moslems and Atheists would appear under one of the above headings.

Because of the interest of the State in the protection and continued welfare of the family as the fundamental unit of society, the State does have a legitimate function in matters relating to the stability of the family unit.
However, the State ordinarily should not have jurisdiction in the actual contracting of a marriage. It’s true role should be limited to recognising all marriages that are certified by a particular, legally-recognised religion, as valid according to the ‘canon’ law of that religion. The State’s role must be a permissive rather than a deterministic one.
Those persons, of any or no religion, who do not wish for a religious marriage could opt for a purely secular, civil marriage where the State, represented by a Registry Office, would be the Witnessing Authorising. The responsibility for any transgressions of the moral law should be attributable solely to the persons contracting such civil marriage.

It seems most desirable, on the grounds of logic and legal common-sense, that if one desires a change in the status of a marriage, appeals for that change should be made to the Witnessing Authority which authorised and certified the contraction of the marriage. This would require that all religious bodies sanctioning marriages must also provide the services of a Marriage Tribunal that could deal with any questions relating to the continuation or possible termination of the marriage state. The Marriage Tribunal should not be in any way influenced by pressure from secular or legal elements of the State but should adjudicate purely on the basis of it’s own Canon Law or equivalent. It’s judgment should be accepted as final by the State.

In proceeding according to this arrangement, those who have contracted a marriage under Catholic auspices, would be obliged to address their appeal to the Catholic Marriage Tribunal.
According to Catholic Canon Law, a validly contracted marriage cannot be annulled for any reason and the tribunal’s function would be limited to determining whether the marriage was valid in the first place, according to the same Canon Law.
If the decision was that the marriage was indeed valid, it would so advise the State and the marriage would continue to be legally binding.
Legal separation, of course, could be established for circumstances where co-habitation had become physically dangerous or mentally unbearable for one of the parties or the children and the necessary legal provisions for the upkeep of wife and children could be made.

If the marriage was under another religious Witnessing Authority than Catholic, a tribunal of that Church, synagogue or mosque would render a determination as to whether, according to it’s tenets, it was lawful to continue to bind or to loose the marriage bond. Such a ruling would be recognised as final by the State.

If the State was the Witnessing Authority, the State through it’s court system would determine whether the marriage should continue to be recognised as legal.

In all of these situations, at the time of appeal by a married person to a marriage tribunal, that tribunal should first pursue all possible efforts to bring about reconciliation between the parties and this initial period should be for a pre-fixed duration - perhaps 6 or 12 months.

In all situations where the Witnessing Authority’s Tribunal ruled in favour of releasing the parties from the married state, the State through it’s court system, would investigate and establish the provisions for the continued financial, physical and moral welfare of the children and their parents.

In the case of recognition of marriages contracted abroad, the same principles could be applied.

Were this system to be introduced into the U.S. it would prevent the divorce of validly-married Catholics and apostate, validly-married Catholics would not be able to go through a form of re-marriage ceremony in a Protestant Church, synagogue, mosque or Registry Office.
It also would place on the various Protestant Churches, the burden of facing up to their responsibilities and their portion of blame for the breakdown in marriage, they who presently appear to be getting the State to do their work for them while perhaps paying lip service to the sanctity of the marriage bond.

How God Reacts With The Natural Order

One of the great mysteries of life is trying to understand how God, who is a pure Spirit without physical elements, can have an effect on the physical, animate or inanimate, things of His Creation. We are told that all God has to do to carry out an action is to will that it occur, that this was how the world was created and all within it.
We are unable to understand how God’s Will causes the desires of His Will to be accomplished. We only know that God is omnipotent and that all of His creation, animate and inanimate, except man, in essence cannot but respond in accordance with His Will. God by special dispensation, freed man’s will and that of the angels.

As humans we cannot imagine e.g. how a person or animal could move except by use of the relevant muscles : how speech could be made except by the use of the muscles of speech : how something could be fabricated or constructed except by use of the limb muscles in conjunction with tools and materials.
Yet, if we enquire in more detail, we can see that in the case of human action, we first must will the action. When we will, when we decide upon, an action, the action follows. If I will, if I decide, to get out of bed at a particular time of the morning, it invariably follows that I do indeed get up at that time unless prevented from doing so by some external force. So here in my own human case, merely by willing to take a particular action, I can cause myself to take that action, and the action occurs.
How the energy of the will, of the decision, gets from the spiritual soul, the spiritual will, outside the body, to the material elements within the body - the nervous system and the muscles - is not known and probably not knowable in this life.

I cannot, however, merely by willing, by deciding, that another person should take a particular action, cause that person to take that action : his action-taking mechanism does not respond to my will : my will has control only over my own action-taking mechanism.

In the case of God, the effects of His will are not of course limited to Himself. Everything and everybody, the animate and inanimate, again except for man and the angels, is essentially automatically responsive to God’s will.
Ordinarily, in relation to human persons, God influences our intellect and will, functions residing within our souls and outside our bodies.
God expects man to freely conform his will to the divine will if he is to reach eternal life but at the same time God gives man freedom to do otherwise, to choose eternal life or eternal death.
The angels, with their free will, elected, some to remain loyal, some to rebel, against the divine will. The angels, good and bad, have finished their period of trial : their free will has already been fully and finally exercised and is no longer a relevant factor.

In the case of the virtuous person, with no obstacle present, the human will is in general accord with the divine will and responsive to it.
In the case of a person in sin - in a situation of spiritual death - that person is unable alone to extricate himself from his spiritual death anymore than a person who is physically dead can restore himself to life. He must have help from God and to get it, he must ask for it or someone else must ask for him.

In the case of the person in sin who is not hardened in his attitude to God’s will, God’s wishes - without infringing upon his free will - can act upon, can influence, through grace, the person’s intellect and will, causing him to recognize the evil of sin and producing a spirit of repentance and amendment of life.
In the case of the person hardened in a state of sin, the sinner who has no interest in virtue or in carrying out God’s will, the person whose conscience is dead or dysfunctional, God’s grace cannot act because this man’s free will rejects God’s grace.
However, Masses can be offered or other prayers on the sinner’s behalf can be made by family or friends : this intercession may be sufficient to induce God’s mercy to soften the heart of the sinner over time, to influence his free will to move towards asking God for mercy, towards a spirit of repentance and amendment of life.