"Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down."
--G. K. Chesterton (The Innocence of Father Brown)

Professor J Budziszewski offers his own version of this quote (even citing the quote itself) in his books about the natural law philosophy. The good professor notes that just as no man can keep at a level of evil, neither can any society. We begin with our favorite sin--usually something specific like fornication or theft which is based upon something abstract such as lust or envy--and our refusal to repent of said sin. Yet, if we can't go through a normal and healthy repentance, we will be dragged through an abnormal, unhealthy form of repentance. Failing to confess the sin--and our guilt in it--we tell all of the sordid details about the sin, in gory detail. A simple sin seems to become an obsession--perhaps even a possessive one; but even having confessed every detail, even crying out "Peace, peace," we find that there is not peace to be had.

Thus we look for atonement--again, a false atonement. Fornication leads to a failure of marriage later in life--begetting adultery and divorce. If there are cildren begotten of this illicit union, abortion is the quickest solution, but in the long run it is not the easiest, for there is one more burden for the conscience.

Next comes the need for reconciliation, which finds itself met not by being rightly reconciled with the community, but rather by "recruiting" more people of the community to the favorite sin. This is a basis for the formation of gangs who steal and commit worse crimes yet; or, in the sin of fornication, it begets the "hook-up" culture, in which a man travels from bed to bed until he can no longer maintain even a modicum of real intimacy with his latest sexual partners. He goes out no longer to have a good time, or even to necessarily find a good partner for the next month, but instead simply "goes on the hunt," becoming a "ladykiller" (or, in the case of the woman who does this, a "maneater").

Each successive date becomes just another notch on the bed-post (similar to notches on the butt of a gunfighter's pistol or an ace's plane). Instead of forming a community with other people, other "I's," such men form a networks of casual hook-ups. Each person in such an anti-community becomes an object rather an a subject--an object for the fulfillment of an urge--and ironically the anti-community becomes the joining together of people who give up their individuality, their personality, their very selves, all just to be mutually self-satisfied in such sexual liaisons. Professor Budziszewski states that this is somewhat "akin to traveling from bed to bed" until a person "loses his ability to form intimate relationships altogether, so that sex is reduced to using another person's body to masturbate." Mister Christopher West has a different expression for this behavior: he calls is "death sex," because each partner is effectively dead to the other in these kinds of relationships. If any woman can fulfill the man's sexual urge, then no particular woman is necessary for it, and they all become effectively interchangeable; if a man's sexual partner from last night turned up dead today, would he shed a tear for her? Would he even recognize her name?

As for our own civilization, we are currently in the fourth stage of non-repentance: satisfying the need for justification. The Church tells us that this is wrong, that this is not how things are supposed to be. The need to be justified mean the need to get back in the right, to not continue to do what we know is wrong. Since we won’t repent of the sin in question, we must do the next best thing: shoot the messenger who tells us that what we are doing is wrong. One such messenger is nearly always the Church. She told us that contraception and divorce are bad ideas, that fornication and adultery are evil, that pornography and abortion are truly wicked. Some listened, and repented of these things. Others attacked the Church for her message.

Mister Pat Archbold has a short article on the National Catholic Register's blog about the link between contraception and the culture of death. Namely, contraception is at the very heart of the culture of death, that much of our civilization has decided that it is committed to this culture, and that we are currently in the justification phase of our non-repentance. Mister Archbold takes to task Mr Harry Knox—the same Harry Knox who serves upon President Barrack Obama’s faith-based advisory council—for his pontification concerning the Supreme Pontiff’s upholding of Church doctrine and dogma concerning sex, specifically those teachings which forbid the use of contraception.

Mister Knox attacks the Church for continuing to proclaim that contraception is a sin, claiming that this is causing millions of people to die from AIDS, all the while forgetting that had people followed the Church’s teachings on sexuality in the first place, AIDS never would have become so widespread. Now that the damage is done—and continuing to become worse in those areas which most ignore the Church while actually improving in those areas in which people heed the Church’s voice—Knox blames the Church for interfering with damage control efforts (never mind that people who disregard the Church’s teachings on fornication and adultery are not exactly the most likely of folks to suddenly heed her advice when it comes to contraception). Pat Archbold, for one, sees Knox’s posturing for what it is: a defense of contraception in general and abortion in particular. That is, Knox is looking to satisfy his need to justify this most egregious sin but shutting out the voice which calls it to mind:

In 2009, in response to the Pope’s comments about condoms and AIDS in Africa, Knox said that the Pope is “hurting people in the name of Jesus.” This past week, Knox was asked if he stood by this statement and he answered with an emphatic “I do.”

….Believe it or not, this is really about abortion. Knox and others recognize, wittingly or unwittingly, that the foundation of modern sexual liberation relies upon denying or removing any of the consequences of that sinful behavior, even to the point of killing. They also know that the contraceptive mentality underpins the entire culture of death. The contraceptive and utilitarian view of life and of procreation is the “mitochondrial Eve” from which all the horrors of the culture of death are descended. Abortion, ESCR, and euthanasia all call contraception “mother.”

That is why any acknowledgment, no matter how trivial, obvious, or scientific, that calls into question the magic consequence-erasing power of contraception must be attacked with all vigor.

The Catholic Church’s consistent and unbending opposition to the contraceptive culture makes it the perennial target of promoters of the culture of death.

G K Chesterton once predicted that society's acceptance of--and ultimately, the dependence upon--contraception would ultimately lead to abortion-on-demand as a "back-up" plan (this was decades before abortion was legalized and even before contraception was given general approval by the public). Decades later, natural law philosophers like Professor Budziszewski link the widespread acceptance of abortion to the next steps to be taken by the culture of death: assisted suicide, euthanasia (with or without patient approval), infanticide.

And as we slide down the slippery slope,
Passing one blood-soaked milepost after another,
Still there is felt a need not to repentant,
But to enter a brave new world by forging ahead—
We are told to believe the world’s wisdom alone,
In this life there is to be only this kind of hope.
A voice cries out from the heart of Rome,
Warning all again this perilous path,
"The right path is straight but narrow,
Turn back, turn back, or abandon thyself
To wander lost in this forlorn wilderness,
Through the chaos you've created forever to roam!"