There seems to be some consensus that the proponents of traditional marriage are losing. An acquaintance from my parish—and fellow Oregonian-in-exile—passed along an article from the leftist organ The Daily Beast which discusses the "evolving" attitude of our culture (whether American or Western Civilization's) concerning marriage. And though the Daily Beast's reporting of historical trends are mostly near the mark, there is a decided push underlying each observation, a push for marriage to be taken one step further and to be opened up to same-sex couples.

Of course, few of their observations are particularly unique: I can point to more than a few conservative Christian (or simply orthodox Catholic) commentators who have made the same observations. For that matter, the Beast's narrative is somewhat implicit in many arguments that the state should recognize as marriages the civil partnerships of homosexual couples. Collectively, these observations look something like this:

There's no war on religion, just a concerted effort to attack it on multiple fronts. Case in point: a woman does something which the Church teaches is gravely immoral. Her pastor then tells her that she has committed a gravely immoral sin. She is dismissed from her position at a Catholic school because she might cause scandal by her example; whether I agree or not with how the Catholic school acted (was this just? was this prudent?) aside, I do know first-hand that people are dismissed from Catholic schools for far more frivolous reasons. The difference is that because these are truly frivolous reasons, they cannot be used as a sort of poster-child for such blatantly anti-Catholic publications as the Huffington Post. To be fair, this particular article is reasonably balanced for a HuffPo piece, though my AOL reader (which is affiliated with them) gives me this [1] as the link to it: "TEACHER FIRED FOR MEDICAL PROCEDURE," so that the sympathetic reader feels all sorry for the woman and wonders just what medical reasons could get a person fired.

Note that the bias is already towards IVF as just another medical procedure, so that moral opposition to it is treated as on a par with, say, opposition to getting teeth drilled, or perhaps to a blood transfusion (there are denominations which treat this procedure as immoral).

I could not vote for President Obama and claim to be a faithful Catholic. I could not in good conscience support a man who is not only so hostile to the Church (there are plenty such people), but who is willing to use the power of the government to further a sort of kulturcampf. It's one thing to enact policies which are contrary to the Church's stance on some issue. Most politicians--Catholic or otherwise--have and will on a variety of issues, and are little worse for it. There are indeed some such things, even some important hings, which would be pointless or even downright detrimental to regulate [1]. Others are a matter of prudence.

The president has gone beyond this. His policies are not a matter of prudence, but rather look quite calculated to destroy the Church, or at the very least to silence her and dictate what she can and cannot teach, to remove her from the public square. There are many who do not think that the Church ought to have a place in the public square, that Catholics (and people of other religions, for that matter) ought to be allowed the freedom to worship [2], and nothing more. But while worship is an important part of our religion, it is not the full extent of that religion.

The New York Times--that paper which Fr John Zuhlsdorf half-seriously calls Hell's Bible has of late been doing its best to proselytize for Hell, or at the very least to proselytize against that Church which is tasked with storming the gates of Hell. Fresh off of publishing the anti-Catholic ad calling for lax and liberal Catholics to quit the Church, they offer up a piece by Mr Frank Bruni about his college roommate, a supposedly faithful Catholic who later left the Church to become an abortionist. I suppose if nothing else, it serves as an interesting cautionary tale [1] about the need to hold fast to the Faith which has been handed down to us, and the need to run our race to the very end: the life of faith is more a marathon than a 40 yard dash, but I digress.

The column by Mr Bruni certainly causes us to ask [2], as Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler does ask, whether or not the point of this is really to get at the truth of the Catholic Faith (or, for that matter, at the goodness or lack thereof of abortion). Echoing Chesterton in her line of reasoning, Mrs Fulwiler writes:
Assuming that it did actually happen as described, let’s take a closer look at what this protester’s situation tells us. Certainly her behavior toward the women entering the abortion facility was deplorable. But, in terms of her decision to get an abortion herself, did the woman say, “I am here because I saw compelling evidence that convinced me that life within the womb is not human”? No. She said, “I don’t have the money for a baby right now. And my relationship isn’t where it should be.” In other words: All we know is that she found living out her pro-life principles to be hard.

Too often, we examine a moral precept, determine that it is hard, and then leap across a logical chasm to assume that it is therefore false. Stories like the pro-lifer getting an abortion aren’t any kind of coup for the pro-choice movement, just as stories of Christians violating the beliefs they profess don’t indicate anything either way about the validity of Christianity. These examples are often cited with an unspoken (and sometimes spoken) conclusion along the lines of, “See? Your beliefs are extremely difficult to follow!” Yet there is another, far more important question that should come next, one that is too often left unasked: “But are these beliefs true?”

What is the Church's stance of stem cell research?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that "Every human life, from the moment of conception until death, is sacred because the human person has been willed for its own sake in the image and likeness of the living and holy God" (CCC 2319). In that same Catechism we read that

Introduction: What is the Trinity?

What is the central doctrine of the Catholic Faith? Some might say that it is the doctrine of the Eucharist, or of the sacraments in general; others might answer that it is the doctrine of Original Sin, or more broadly of Creation-Fall-Salvation-Sanctification. It might be argued that our central doctrine is the revelation of Christ as true God and true man, or that He established a Church through which God would continue to teach us and speak to us until the world's end. These are all very important doctrines, but none of them is ultimately the central doctrine of the Catholic Faith. Rather, the core doctrine of our faith—the central tenet in which all other doctrines are rooted—is the doctrine of the Trinity. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) tells us that
“From the beginning, the revealed truth of the Holy Trinity has been at the very root of the Church's living faith, principally by means of Baptism. It finds its expression in the rule of baptismal faith, formulated in the preaching, catechesis, and prayer of the Church” (CCC 249).
It is therefore worth asking what is meant by the doctrine of the Trinity. The best summary of the doctrine is to say that there are three distinct persons united in one divine nature, that is, that there is one God in three persons. Oddly enough, though we do find references to all Three Persons of the Trinity in the Bible (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 13:13, Galatians 4:6 or John 14-17), the doctrine itself is not formulated in the Bible but rather through Tradition and through the teaching authority of the early Church.

Why is the Church opposed to contraceptive use? And what is Natural Family Planning (NFP)?

This question is complex enough that I will break it up into pieces in answering it. First, what does the Church teach concerning contraception? Second, What is so great about NFP? Third, why is contraception a sin?

What Is the Church Teaching Concerning Contraception?
The Church teaching concerning contraceptive use is very old, and traces itself explicitly to the early (indeed, apostolic) days of the Church; implicitly it can be traced back even further. It is nicely summarized by Pope Pius VI in his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae ("On Human Life"):
Therefore We base Our words on the first principles of a human and Christian doctrine of marriage when We are obliged once more to declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children. Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary.

Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means.

Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one, or that such intercourse would merge with procreative acts of past and future to form a single entity, and so be qualified by exactly the same moral goodness as these. Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good," it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it—in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general. Consequently, it is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong.

What does it mean to say that the pope is infallible? Does this mean that he never makes any mistakes, never sins, or that he is perfect?

The doctrine of Papal Infallibility [1] was formally defined at the first Vatican council in 1870, but its roots run much deeper:

When Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" They replied, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter said in reply, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Jesus said to him in reply, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." (Matthew 16:14-19).

We can trace in an unbroken line all of the popes, from Benedict XVI back to Peter the apostle; and just as we believe that the bishops are the successors of the apostles, we believe that the Pope, as earthly head of the Church, is the successor to the "head" apostle, Saint Peter. As such, he is the visible head of the Church on earth and the vicar of Christ, who Is the Head of the Church (Ephesians 5:23).

There are, as we know, seven principle virtues—four cardinal virtues and three theological ones—I a daresay that abortion manages to violate all seven of them. Few sins, I think, can claim such thoroughness in being so opposed to virtue.

Abortion and Prudence

I'm still having troubles with the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Why does the Church insist on this dogma, and doesn't it contradict the Bible?

Recall that there are three common objections to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception which are made by modern Protestants in general and Evangelicals and Fundamentalists in particular:

• Only God is sinless. So if Catholics believe that Mary is sinless too, does that not mean that Catholics make Mary into God (or a god)? Jesus was sinless because He Is God.
• Isn't sin a part of human nature? Then how can Catholics believe that Mary was conceived without sin?
• Doesn't the Bible itself tell us that all of us are sinners—and so doesn't this belief necessarily contradict the Bible?

There may be a number of other less-frequent objections, but, as I have mentioned before, to treat every objection would require too much time for even a short series of posts (or RCIA sessions). In the previous installments of this short series, I considered in turn the doctrine of original sin and what the Church teaches concerning the Immaculate Conception, and then I replied to the first two objections. Today, I would like to wrap-up by considering a few of the Biblical verses concerning this doctrine.