Thoughts on Birth Control

This past weekend the administration came forth with it's final policy which will require all employers with very few exceptions to provide free of co-pays, deductibles or other contributions, prescription birth control for those who wish it.  Catholic hospitals, universities and other charitable organizations that perform their corporeal acts of mercy as an outreach of their faith, shall not be exempted. 

In other words, it does not matter if you morally object, you can worship as you like, just don't practice it in real life.   Don't integrate your faith into every corner of your hearth and home and business or livelihood, keep your religion on Sunday only, safe and locked up inside the church walls.  Don't let it change how you live, how you buy, how you conduct business.   Don't worry that your taxes pay for more war now, or for abortion abroad, or for Planned Parenthood to play around with it's books so as to continue lobbying for more money to continue killing.  After all, you're just funding all these things, you aren't using them. 

Our ancestors in faith went into fire and Colosseums filled with lions for less.  We're being asked to erode our own faith in thimbles.  Deny this small fragment of the cross, and everyone will get along. Cover up the pictures of the Cross and take down the crucifix so everyone is comfortable. God will understand. Our God is a loving God, ergo, if we fudge on this or that, it won't matter.  These are just details and God isn't interested in the details. 

There are two great ways to Hell, deliberate choice and indifferent sloth. Either we plunge in the boiling water or we allow the water to gradually reach a boil; in both scenarios, we are scalded.

Our society is demanding we acknowledge our faith less and less.  Don't quibble or speak up when people live together or use the pill or even flinch when sex is glorified in all ways but that which glorifies on television and online.  Say nothing. Get along.  It's not you so it doesn't matter.  We are being taught to care less and less, to love less and less, to do less and less, even for those around us we love.  You don't really need to go to church. You don't really need to pray. You don't really need to believe that the Eucharist is fully Christ fully present.  God won't be mad or unhappy with you if you use birth control, live together, have affairs, watch pornography, have an addiction or in some way let something else be more dominant in your life than Him.  He's not hung up on the sacraments.  It's a caustic eroding voice that constantly whispers in one way or another, God doesn't care what you do. 

The thing is, if God doesn't care what you do, then God doesn't care about you personally.  An all loving God would care more about what you do than your mother or father, and I care profoundly about what my kids do and don't do, what they say and don't say, what they think and don't think, and I hope I steer them towards good things, things that will bring them joy, fulfillment, beauty and truth. God has to care more than me, ergo, there is nothing we do that God doesn't care about more.

God knows how souls grow or shrink.  At some point on the road of shrugging one's shoulders about what one ought to be engaged in doing, the soul gets mad and then the decision becomes wilful.  It is then we are in greatest peril.  When we declare to God, "I don't care." what we're really saying is, "I don't want to care.  So I'm choosing not to." The serpent knows we are lazy and desirous of always choosing the easier seemingly softer path.  So he whispers to us that we can do less. We can love less.  That we will love more if we have fewer to love.  And that we will still be loved --that is true, but the reality is that we will recognize that love in action less if we act with less love in our lives.

We are fallen, so we always get things backwards when it comes to thinking like God. We always think we can outfox Him or come up with a legal argument that will be irrefutable.  It is proof of our pride that we perpetually delude ourselves into thinking either God doesn't care or God can be bemused into giving us a mulligan on parts of our lives.   I know there are people who will say, this is no big deal.  People work at all kinds of jobs and pay into their insurance plans which fund abortions and prescription drugs, sex changes and sterilizations.  The federal government demanding that there be no exceptions is no biggie. 

It is a biggie.  We're not supposed to quietly accept the corroding of our souls or the undermining of our values at our institutions or in our families.  We're supposed to speak out, to remind those in power, those making the decisions, that this is wrong, that this injures, that this prevents us from living fully our lives according to the religion we hold true.  To those who shrug, next time, the recommendations will probably demand abortion be covered as well.  Little sin, little indifference, leads to bigger sin, bigger wrongs.  This world will never become better or less wrong if we keep allowing little sins and little sins and little sins by our silence.  This world will not become less broken by acquiescing to get along.  Appeasement never works, in political policy or the soul. 

The goal is genuine peace, and that only comes from self sacrifice, selfless love, and being willing to hold onto the whole heart, the whole cross, the whole Eucharist.  Loving God first means everything else is secondary, and that includes Caesar.