http://www.gallup.com/poll/114091/Americans-Approve-Obama-Actions-Date.aspx

The poll found that the public agreed with Obama’s action in five instances, and disagreed in two. The Executive Order allowing government funding to organizations that promote abortion overseas had the lowest approval rating of the seven actions discussed. Only about a third of Americans actually approve of this action (which probably explains why he signed the order with so little fanfair and publicity).

The Catholic church’s deep teaching on human sexuality is far more beautiful and better than your cheap, anemic summary. I know; I live it.

Crash course: There either is or isn’t a God. He either did or did not design the world. He either did or did not infuse it with a purpose. We Catholics see His design, and we say others, through reading the plan of nature, can also see it: Sex is for the purpose of babies and bonding, and pleasure is the lovely side effect.

If you decide to set up pleasure as the purpose: you can do that, but, like it or not, the consequences will be bad. That’s because you have the purpose wrong. We’re just pointing out the natural purpose of things, if you want to be God or are ticked because you don’t like the plan, or don’t see it that way, so be it. Go ahead and get angry at deeper thinkers other than yourself, like the giants of Catholic thought. It doesn’t change reality. If you’re right, not the Church, all the fruits of the sexual revolution should be bearing good fruit about now. If you think that fruit is juicy and smells good, so be it. I think STD’s, divorce, and abortion smell rotten.

I love spacing babies via Natural Family Planning, in the context of monogamous marriage, as the Church teaches. Not because it is easy but because it bears good fruit: let’s see: self-control, sex with meaning, sex grounded in relationship, sex with someone who doesn’t see babies as something to be rooted out with technology (yick!), no STD’s, no treating my fertility as a disease, no treating me as merely an object of pleasure.
Oh, and no pill: no peeing estrogen out into the drinking water and wreaking serious environmental damage, no increased risk of breast cancer.

As far as I’m concerned, the Catholic Church is my best friend and greatest advocate as a woman. The more people strive to actually follow what she teaches, the better off we are.

You don’t think so? don’t follow it. But, I’ll never buy for a second that your world view leads to good results.

There are also good reasons to torture people suspected of terrorism. But both are intrinsically evil. Neither can be morally legitimate no matter how compelling the reasons for doing them.

Rape and incest are violent acts. So is an abortion. Abortion does not improve or fix the act of violence, it adds to it. Giving birth, while painful, is not inherently violent or destructive. Ask all the moms of the world. A woman who gives birth after rape or incest actually brings healing to a violent act. Ask the women who have actually had babies in these circumstances.

The OT is the national story of the Jews. It was written over nearly 1400 years +/- a century or two, depending on whose dating you accept. It is a mix of genres; mythology, stories, laws, history, court chronicles, poetry, etc. It testifies to the ancient Jews understanding of how they became a nation and how God dealt with them in making them a nation.

Catholics (and others, I am sure) do not see it as a how to manual. Nor do we take every bit of it literally. We consider it valuable for obvious reasons and learn a great deal from it.

A set of books containg stories about the creation of the world (which none of the authors witnessed, I hardly need remind you), stories of how the Hebrews became a people and a nation in the misty past and written down in the early iron age, are probably going to reflect the views and ways of thinking of the writers of that long ago time.

They won’t be footnoted and scientifically gussied up the way 20th century writers would do history. That means we are going to have to read them carefully, trying to see them from the point of view of the writer and what he was trying to convey. Then we can draw out the lessons that may be contained in them.

We make decisions every day on value of human life. Every speed limit is set knowing there will be a certain number of deaths, every war declared, every tobacco tax set, every building standard has an acceptable body count.

The bottom line is that we make choices between lives and we do it on the basis of what is best for the group. It is to the advantage of the group to protect the productivity of young adults. Their potential is our most valuable asset…more valuable than the brain dead child on life support and more valuable than the non sentient human in the womb.

We all live in a world of limited resources. All choices are triage, and all of us participate in life and death choices every day – not just the chick popping a plan B.