Working With Blinders On

40 years and a couple weeks since Humanae Vitae was written and so much of society, secular and not, just seems to not “get it”.  One of the “better” pieces is here – at least John L. Allen isn’t actively condemning the church, but the comments that follow it are close to rabid.  If you do a Google search on the news for “Humanae Vitae” you will find a slew of folks opining about how out of step, out of touch or just down right evil Rome is to hang on to this out modded teaching.  Yes, the blinders are firmly on.    What they miss is how much of the heart of the Catholic Church, the young families and the college aged Catholics are pretty firmly behind the Church on this.   The assumption seems to be if you don’t buy into the cultural norm of what sex is and means then you must be nuts (or brain washed, or have a really awful sex life).    But I do not see that as the case.

From where I sit there isn’t a lot to be said FOR the pill.  So you can have sex anytime you want.  But do you want to?  Sure you can put off child bearing or artificially space your children, but is that really a good thing?   If marriages were stronger, children were happier, rape was less frequent,  motherhood was respected, young women were judged on their minds and character instead of their beauty I might think that the “pro-birth-control” people at least had a point.  But this isn’t the case.  All of these things have become worse since the pill was introduced not better.   The media doesn’t even seem to think about this all as related and society doesn’t seem to question the conventional “wisdom” at all, they tighten up the blinders and tut tut the Pope and talk about the backward Catholics that follow the teachings of Rome as being out of step with reality.    Personally I sort of like being counter cultural.