** Revenge of the Cradle and Contraception for Health

The Obama administration has used a more or less open-ended provision of a law on healthcare to mandate inclusion of contraceptive as a supported health practice.  Spokesmen, and I do mean "men" for the most part, are making claims that this is some kind of intrusion or controversion of Catholic Dogma on birth control.

I guess no matter what the Roman Catholic Church states on the issue, I think we can be a bit skeptical.  It has seemed to me for many years that the RCC opposition to birth control (and illegal immigration from Mexico) has had next to nothing to do with religious belief, but everything to do with methods to maintain or increase Catholic numbers in society.  A previous post here indicated the economic, social, and health factors related to contraception as healthcare.  Below are links which suggest the opposition is all about "revenge of the cradle" and the general failure of the Catholic Church to recruit new members as do "evangelical" protestant religions.

The Economist on costs of "Revenge of the Cradle"

Wikepedia defining Revenge of the Cradle

Native Americans lamenting the impact of Revenge of The Cradle

All Road Ministry tracts on Why Catholics Don't Evangelize

http://www.allroadsministry.com/tracts/why_dont_catholics_evangeli.html

Triangular Christianity on Vatican perspective on Evangelism

And, what appears to be a balanced perspective of St. Augustine’s concepts of “just wars”. With our own less balanced perspective and hundreds of years of history, we might wonder if tolerance of the princely wars was a way to prevent the princes from waging  “just wars” against the church as a state entity while pandering to the interests of the princes and enlisting them in the forced conversion to Catholicism under government force, wars, conquerors, generals, police states, etc. ..

St. Augustine on Just Wars.

Well, if you slogged through all of the above, you may be thinking that taking what the males of the Catholic Church present as fundamental religion based on the word of God, may actually be more about ways to keep a bureaucratic religious organization and state populated and contributing while making sure women realize the wonderful wisdom of "barefoot and pregnant".  For sure God wants the world filled with little baby Catholics. Just ask a celibate priest..

** Stay tuned even if President Obama's "Job Approval" has climbed over 50% and a CBS poll indicates both Protestants and Catholics support contraception as healthcare by the same 61% --- Doug Wiken

 

Comments

[D.E. Bishop]

You nailed it Doug. This is all about politics and power for the boys in Rome. Some of them may be genuinely and humbly faithful people. Not so much for the majority. The Vatican has the same court intrigues any other powerful monarchy has ever had.