Birth rates hang on nations' spiritual horizons

Young people don't want to share their life with children.

Europe and the United States have resorted to high immigration to prevent slow national death. Countries such as China, Korea and Japan, suffering similar — or more sickly — birthrates, have not had recourse to such a measure. But that said there is a common thread linking those countries that cannot persuade its couples to have more than one child, even to marry.

That thread is the consumerist belief system of young people around the world, as Michael Cook writes on his Mercator website:

Fundamentally, the reason for the decline [in the birth rate] is the same everywhere – the younger generation has no spiritual horizons. Even the Chinese, who are not religious in a Western sense, used to believe in the duty of filial piety of perpetuating the family line [...]. But now, it seems, they are thoroughly materialistic in their outlook.

It is becoming clearer and clearer that it is only in communities with deeply-rooted religious convictions that a pro-natalist outlook can take root. Just look at the Amish or Salafist Muslims or ultra-Orthodox Jews, or various communities of Catholics and Protestants.

Of course, gender equality, government support for families, flexible work schedules and so forth will help boost fertility at the margins. But for reasons which remain mysterious, religious convictions give couples an optimistic outlook on life which promotes large families. So if President Xi is truly determined to elevate “love and marriage, fertility and family” amongst Chinese women, he ought to ditch Marxist dialectical materialism. Will he? Of course not. But he will have to live with the fact that, in the words of one Chinese demographer, “China Is Dying Out”. 

The comforts of consumerism, the learned habit of evading circumstances that require sacrifice of self in terms of time, effort, or discipline — these are the fruit of the mentality, even ideology, that has taken hold of many societies, manifest by the slump in the willingness to serve others through volunteering, as for example in Australia, England, and the United States.

Further, the vague spirituality that the growing numbers of "Nones" claim offers no escape from a bland and superficial perspective concerning social roles and meaning in life. The unfortunate result is that young and old find themselves in the prison of despair, a "Slough of Despond" in the wider religious sense, leading to increases in suicide (about a 10 percent increase in Australia between 2013 and 2022; and see here; and a 16 per cent rise in the US between 2011 and 2022). 

Each society, therefore, is challenged to restore what has been lost among its people and find the source of a meaningful and fulfilling life that taps into our transcendental reality rather than a mere desire for self-invention.

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Allowing distractions is not the way to cope

Johannes Schwarz says Mass in the Syrian desert on his walking pilgrimage to Jerusalem

In our times it's worth examining a statement from an outstanding thinker whose perspective on the human condition benefits from his being removed from the tribulations of this confused era. One highly relevant insight of this kind comes from Blaise Pascal, and it's this:

“All of humanity's problems stem from each person's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” 

The implications of this for us today are central to the human project, says Johannes Schwarz, who has lived largely as a hermit in the Italian Alps for the past eight years. This Catholic priest has launched a series of monthly video accounts of his daily life that include his artistic endeavours as well as the mundane tending his small house and garden, and he is an adept observer of the natural world around his mountain-top vantage-point.

He takes from Pascal the warning that "through the constant pursuit of distractions we are in danger of not knowing ourselves, living life superficially, avoiding the deeper reality, the deeper questions".

Schwarz's reflection on the condition of what is the condition of most people on the planet, given during his January video, starts with Pascal's challenge: 

“All of humanity's problems stem from each person's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” 

This loose quote from Blaise Pascal, the 17th century French thinker, physicist and brilliant mathematician, pops up on social media walls occasionally. It comes from his Pensées (number 139), fragmentary thoughts penned without ever being arranged into the intended larger work.

What Pascal meant was that we seek distractions. These distractions we find necessary, because otherwise the gravity of our situation — “the natural poverty of our feeble and mortal condition”, he calls it — would oppress us too greatly. And thus we flee into the noise and drown out the unpleasant side of reality. Pascal does not write this with scorn. He was understanding. He must have been. His relatively short life was shaped by the Thirty Years' War, one of the longest and most destructive conflicts on the European continent. Distraction was a way to cope. 

So what does he think the problem is? The first, surely, is that through the constant pursuit of distractions we are in danger of not knowing ourselves, living life superficially, avoiding the deeper reality, the deeper questions. And it all gets worse, says Pascal, if we mistake the distractions for sources of true happiness.

We imagine, he says, the possession of the objects of our quests will really make us happy. Yet we eventually attain what we seek and soon find we are still unhappy. The bigger house did not change our internal state. The promotion did not produce lasting contentment. A relationship that promised joy, also comes with demands. We want to be at rest and are ever restless. There is something insatiable in our pursuit. There is something insatiable in the nature of our desire. 

Some see in this nothing but a “drive”, an evolutionary force that once propelled us forward —  whatever “forward” is supposed to mean in a blind, meaningless cosmos. It holds, now that our minds perceive it, only empty promises and despair. Distractions to the rescue.  

Others would say with Pascal that we seek rest as by a “secret instinct, a remnant of the greatness of our original nature, which teaches that happiness in reality consists only in rest, and not in stir.” Augustine a millennium earlier had famously written: “Restless is our heart until it rests in you, O Lord”. Or as Pascal says elsewhere: “What does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there, the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself.” (425) Here it is: The famous “God-shaped hole” in man. 

That is why, says Pascal, we have difficulty sitting quietly in a room by ourselves.

But from what has been said it is clear that the point is not that we have to learn to sit quietly. The point is that we should perceive distractions as distractions and not let them overpower the more pertinent questions — questions that we will have to face if happiness and rest are not the ultimate illusion. 

So we are not confined to a room. We do not have to lock ourselves in. In fact, I personally have always found walking to be perfectly ordered to this pursuit. I find pilgrimages a great way to leave distractions and the noise behind. There are stages of such a journey. The first is physical, with pain and strain as the body adjusts. But over time, the physical aspect fades into the background.

Next, the mind begins to wander, thirsting for new impressions, encounters and discoveries. You may spend weeks sorting in your mind experiences and dialogues of the past. But eventually the rhythm of your steps slowly clears the mind. You find yourself getting more and more quiet. And at some point you'll stop talking to yourself and start listening.You'll find yourself "being" — being as you are. Once you've become quiet; once you simply "are", your hiking boots no longer matter. You have started on a journey inward. What will you find? Or whom?

Ω  See also  Priest turns forsaken farm....

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Surrogacy danger: Why the Pope is right

Men win case after mother refuses to give up child

In his New Year's address to diplomats at the Vatican, Pope Francis called for global action against human surrogate motherhood, saying it is a "grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child". News media around the world gave some prominence to his concern. 

In this post I will show how the Pope's concerns are fully supported by human rights groups and feminists of the calibre of Renate Klein and June Bindel. 

The AFP agency's report of the Pope's call for action includes this:

In a speech dominated by calls for an end to conflicts around the world, the head of the worldwide Catholic Church said: "The path to peace calls for respect for life."

This began "with the life of the unborn child in the mother's womb, which cannot be suppressed or turned into an object of trafficking", he said.

"In this regard, I deem deplorable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother's material needs.

"A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract. Consequently, I express my hope for an effort by the international community to prohibit this practice universally."

The Pope's words in full on this subject are these:

The path to peace calls for respect for life, for every human life, starting with the life of the unborn child in the mother’s womb, which cannot be suppressed or turned into an object of trafficking. In this regard, I deem deplorable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs. A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract.

Consequently, I express my hope for an effort by the international community to prohibit this practice universally. At every moment of its existence, human life must be preserved and defended; yet I note with regret, especially in the West, the continued spread of a culture of death, which in the name of a false compassion discards children, the elderly and the sick. 

Exponential growth but unethical all the same

The AFP notes that June 2022, the pope condemned surrogacy as an "inhuman" practice involving the exploitation of women, treating them solely as a "uterus for rent".

Whereas some countries have imposed limits on surrogacy, such as prohibiting women being hired by foreigners to produce a baby —India and Thailand are examples—the commercialisation of the practice has grown exponentially, sometimes under the cover of  "altruistic" surrogacy, whereby a woman gives birth to a baby on behalf of another woman or couple but no money changes hands, excluding for expenses, which item becomes the substitute fee for the trade. This is legal in countries including Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, Canada, Brazil and Colombia.

Commercial surrogacy outright is permitted in some US states.

The Sojourners magazine has noted that the "Christian community, in general, is divided over the practice of gestational surrogacy and that faith leaders have some catching up to do when it comes to understanding reproductive technologies and articulating moral guidance".

“The fact that theological guidance on this is all over the map suggests that in a lot of our churches and seminaries, we’re not doing a lot of thinking about some of these issues in bioethics,” said Scott Rae, co-author of Outside the Womb: Moral Guidance for Assisted Reproduction, to Sojourners.

What the Pope is responding to has been the focus of women's groups for several years: "the objectification of women, the commodification of the new-born, the trafficking of human beings, and the violation of human dignity of the woman exploited as ‘surrogate mother’ and the child, thus undermining women’s and child's rights", according to the coalition of groups that made representations to the European Parliament in 2022. Coalition members are the European Women’s Lobby, European Network of Migrant Women, International Coalition Against Prostitution, and the International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood.

Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation by Renate Klein, a Swiss-born Australian academic, writer, publisher, and feminist health activist, contains the fruit of long study of the outcomes to women and children caught up in the commercialisation of reproduction. 

The book's publisher has this to say about its contents:

In Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation Renate Klein details her objections to surrogacy by examining the short- and long-term harms done to the so-called surrogate mothers, egg providers and the female partner in a heterosexual commissioning couple. Klein also looks at the rights of children and compares surrogacy to (forced) adoption practices. She concludes that surrogacy, whether so-called altruistic or commercial can never be ethical. 

Feminist campaigns against idea of a 'right' to a baby 

Another prominent campaigner against surrogacy—based on her personal research—is British writer, journalist and feminist icon, Julie Bindel. Her research into how surrogacy affects Third World women as victims of contractors from the First World has given her the ability to speak knowledgeably to those in power about the social harm surrogacy promotes. See her account of the state of affairs in her contribution at the Conference for the International Abolition of Surrogacy in the French National Assembly. 

In her writing on the subject Bindel offers many insights into the social harm done by those involved in the commodification of human life:

More and more people around the world, from gay couples and heterosexuals with fertility struggles to well-off women who simply do not want to be burdened by pregnancy, are choosing to pay for surrogacy services as a way of accessing parenthood. With “my body, my choice” feminists enthusiastically embracing surrogacy as an act of empowerment and inclusion, the abusive practice of outsourcing pregnancy to underprivileged and marginalised women is becoming widely accepted, and even mainstream.

In public discussions about surrogacy, the hypothetical surrogate mother is always a healthy, happy, young woman who enjoys being pregnant and finds joy in helping an infertile couple have children. She gives birth to a healthy baby without any complications, hands the baby to its “legal” parents without any distress, and goes on her merry way.

Real life is rarely, if ever, this straightforward.

I’m sure there really are women who carry babies for their relatives, friends or even strangers without expecting anything in return and find the experience rewarding.

Yet the overwhelming majority of women who sign up to become a surrogate mother, including those in jurisdictions where commercial surrogacy is illegal, do so because of poverty – the surrogacy industry, in its entirety, is nothing but a reproductive brothel.

Supporters of surrogacy, just like supporters of prostitution, claim that monetary incentive does not equal coercion and that “womb work” is work like any other. But could growing new life in your womb, birthing that life with great risk to your own wellbeing, and then handing it over to the person who commissioned it ever be considered just another type of “work”?

Is the inside of a woman’s body really an acceptable workplace? Can a few atypical examples, where everyone, including the surrogate mother, gains from the experience, allow us to overlook the grave consequences of the commercialisation of wombs, for society in general and women in particular? 

Some years ago, during a research trip to California, I met a woman called Jayne.

She told me she once agreed to be a surrogate for a wealthy couple because she was trapped in an abusive marriage with a man in the army, and was desperate to earn some money and leave the house they shared in the military barracks. Treated appallingly from the outset, Jayne was banned from riding a bicycle, having sex, or attending medical appointments alone. She was told what to eat and drink.  All of this was written into a legal contract which included an instruction to give up the baby immediately – without ever even holding it. Jayne was also required to undergo a caesarean birth so that the child could be delivered on a date convenient to the commissioning parents.

 Untold stories of the 'cow on a farm'

“I felt like a cow on a farm,” she told me. “My body was not mine, it belonged to them. I honestly had never felt so powerless in my life.”

I met so many women, just like Jayne, who have been severely traumatised by their experience as surrogate mothers. Unfortunately, we rarely hear from them. The surrogacy industry and its many supporters focus their attention on the feelings and desires of “commissioning parents”, and fail to pay any attention to the suffering of the women who make it all possible.

People defend those renting wombs saying everyone has a “right” to parenthood. They ask, how can gay men have biological children if not through surrogacy? Wouldn’t it be homophobic to take this opportunity away from them? Also what about women who cannot carry a pregnancy to term for whatever reason, should they never experience motherhood?

Well, for everyone who has the means to pursue surrogacy, including gay couples, adoption is also an option.

Nobody has the right to a biological child, regardless of their sexuality or sex. The use of impoverished women’s bodies for the benefit and convenience of those claiming parenthood as “their human right” is anathema to women’s liberation.

Whether it is altruistic or for-profit, surrogacy is exploitation – it turns the female body into a commodity for hire. Those gushing about the joy surrogacy brings to the lives of commissioning parents, and claiming it is a “human right” to have a biological child, should take some time to consider the many wrongs being done to the women used as surrogates.

— From "Surrogacy: Human right, or just wrong?" Why do so many believe that it is a ‘right’ for anyone to have their own biological child? 

From the insights of the likes of Klein and Bindel, and activist groups like Stop Surrogacy Now, we can understand why Pope Francis is alarmed by the risks society is taking in this area. His call for the global abolition of surrogacy is an echo of his pointing to the risks humanity is taking by permitting the spread of nuclear weapons. Just as the second is widely seen as Doomsday material, so should the first be seen as laying the path to the utter degradation of humans and of our society as a whole. Slavery is another curse humans imposed on each other before realising the harm to society of the practice.

Real people, real damage to lives

I want to offer more information about the harm to mother and child that accompanies surrogacy.

The findings collected by the Stop Surrogacy Now organisation are definitive:

We are women and men of diverse ethnic, religious, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds from all regions of the world. We come together to voice our shared concern for women and children who are exploited through surrogacy contract pregnancy arrangements.

Together we affirm the deep longing that many have to be parents. Yet, as with most desires, there must be limits. Human rights provide an important marker for identifying what those limits should be. We believe that surrogacy should be stopped because it is an abuse of women’s and children’s human rights.

Surrogacy often depends on the exploitation of poorer women. In many cases, it is the poor who have to sell and the rich who can afford to buy. These unequal transactions result in consent that is under informed if not uninformed, low payment, coercion, poor health care, and severe risks to the short- and long-term health of women who carry surrogate pregnancies.

The medical process for surrogacy entails risks for the surrogate mother, the young women who sell their eggs, and the children born via the assisted reproductive technologies employed. The risks to women include Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome (OHSS), ovarian torsion, ovarian cysts, chronic pelvic pain, premature menopause, loss of fertility, reproductive cancers, blood clots, kidney disease, stroke, and, in some cases, death. Women who become pregnant with eggs from another woman are at higher risk for pre-eclampsia and high blood pressure.

Children born of assisted reproductive technologies, which are usually employed in surrogacy, also face known health risks that include: preterm birth, stillbirth, low birth weight, fetal anomalies, and higher blood pressure. A surrogate pregnancy intentionally severs the natural maternal bonding that takes places in pregnancy—a bond that medical professionals consistently encourage and promote. The biological link between mother and child is undeniably intimate, and when severed has lasting repercussions felt by both. In places where surrogacy is legalized, this potential harm is institutionalized.

— Source: See here and here 

The fact that Pope Francis identifies "the West" as a particular zone of death and harm to human beings in all stages of their life corresponds with the unwillingness of people in Western (and WEIRD) countries to bow to God's law of human conduct, and particularly to accept that God has a plan for each person.

Instead, this is an age of bland consumerism that extends into all sectors of life, and the use of surrogacy denies that it is the human person's privilege to walk in step with Providence. Only inner pain is gained by trying to buck God's loving plan, demanding though it may be.

Finally, we can see in surrogacy another of those cases like the development of nuclear weapons where we have to say:  "We have the means to do it, but we should not do it!"  

💢 See also:

• Irish Supreme Court struggles with outcome of surrogacy arrangements
• No maternity rights for commissioning mothers in surrogacy arrangements
• Surrogacy and maternity rights
• Gestational parents, non-genetic mothers, siblings with different mothers: family law in a quandary
• Two fathers sue after surrogate gave birth to a daughter

Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified by email when a new post is published. 

Jesus is here..."But love does such things!"

A child born to us....from Adoration of the Child, Gerard van Honthorst (1620)

In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God;

God is being described. With him is someone else, someone called “the Word”; he is the expression of the meaning and fullness of God, the First Person, Speaker of the Word. This Second Person is also God, “was God,” yet there is only one God. Further, the Second Person “came” into his own: into the world which he had created. Let us consider carefully what this means: the everlasting, infinite Creator not only reigns over or in the world but, at a specific “moment,” crossed an unimaginable borderline and personally entered into history—he, the inaccessibly remote one! 

This is the Italian-German theologian Romano Guardini speaking in his classic The Lord. It's a classic because it has gained recognition generation by generation for offering incisive insight into the why and how of God among us. This book was first published in Germany in 1937, and an English-language translation was published in 1954. Guardini, a priest and and academic, influenced some of the ecumenical thinking expressed in the documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). 

Guardini, in a chapter of The Lord titled "The Incarnation" continues:

However, this journey of God from the everlasting into the transitory, this stride across the border into history, is something no human intellect can altogether grasp. The mind might even oppose the apparently fortuitous, human aspect of this interpretation with its own "purer" idea of godliness, yet precisely here lies hidden the kernel of Christianity. Before such an unheard of thought the intellect bogs down. Once at this point a friend gave me a clue that helped my understanding more than any measure of bare reason. He said: "But love does such things!" Again and again these words have come to the rescue when the mind has stopped short at some intellectual impasse. Not that they explain anything to the intelligence; they arouse the heart, enabling it to feel its way into the secrecy of God. The mystery is not understood, but it does move nearer, and the danger of "scandal: disappears.

None of the great things in human life springs from the intellect; every one of them issues from the heart and its love. If even human love has its own reasoning, comprehensible only to the heart that is open to it, how much truer must this be of God's love! When it is the depth and power of God that stirs, is there anything of which love is incapable? The glory of it is so overwhelming that to all who do not accept love as an absolute point of departure, its manifestations must seem the most senseless folly.

The particularity of God's coming to us in human form, as a kind of fulfilment of the proto-gospel of the ancient Greek and Roman legends, is astonishing given the social status of those given the responsibility of parental care, and the colonised nation, and the minor towns of birth and residence in which Jesus was planted to grow in stature and then to step forward to address the world. However, ...

If someone in Capharnaum or Jerusalem at the time had asked the Lord: Who are you? Who are your parents? To what house do you belong? – He might have answered in the words of St. John’s gospel: “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I am.” (8:58) Or he might have pointed out that he was “of the house and family of David.” (Luke 2:4)

How do the Evangelists begin their records of the life of Jesus of Nazareth who is Christ, the Anointed One? John probes the mystery of God’s existence for Jesus’ origin. His gospel opens: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God; He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing that has been made. . . . He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world knew him not. . . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. And we saw his glory – glory as of the only-begotten of the Father – full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1–14)

The incarnation, God taking on human form, and the trinity of persons in one Godhead, are the most distinctive truths of Christianity: 

Revelation shows that the merely unitarian God found in post-Christian Judaism, in Islam, and throughout the modern consciousness, does not exist. At the heart of that mystery which the Church expresses in her teaching of the trinity of persons in the unity of life stands the God of Revelation.

Here John seeks the root of Christ’s existence: in the second of the Most Holy Persons; the Word (Logos), in whom God the Speaker, reveals the fullness of his being. Speaker and Spoken, however, incline towards each other and are one in the love of the Holy Spirit. The Second “Countenance” of God, here called Word, is also named Son, since he who speaks the Word is known as Father.

In the Lord’s farewell address, the Holy Spirit is given the promising names of Consoler, Sustainer, for he will see to it that the brothers and sisters in Christ are not left orphans by his death. Through the Holy Spirit the Redeemer came to us, straight from the heart of the Heavenly Father. Son of God become man – not only descended to inhabit a human frame, but “become” man – literally; and in order that no possible doubt arise, (that, for example, it might never be asserted that Christ, despising the lowliness of the body, had united himself only with the essence of a holy soul or with an exalted spirit,) John specifies sharply: Christ “was made flesh.”

Only in the flesh, not in the bare spirit, can destiny and history come into being. . . .God descended to us in the person of the Savior, Redeemer, in order to have a destiny, to become history. Through the Incarnation, the founder of the new history stepped into our midst. With his coming, all that had been before fell into its historical place “before the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” anticipating or preparing for that hour; all that was to be, faced the fundamental choice between acceptance and rejection of the Incarnation.

He “dwelt among us,” “pitched his tent among us,” as one translation words it. “Tent” of the Logos – what is this but Christ’s body: God’s holy pavilion among men, the original tabernacle of the Lord in our Midst, the “temple” Jesus meant when he said to the Pharisees: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (John 2:19)

Somewhere between that eternal beginning and the temporal life in the flesh lies the mystery of the Incarnation. St. John presents it austerely, swinging its full metaphysical weight. Nothing here of the wealth of lovely characterization and intimate detail that makes St. Luke’s account bloom so richly. Everything is concentrated on the ultimate, all-powerful essentials: Logos, flesh, step into the world; the eternal origin, the tangible earthly reality, [but still] the mystery of unity.

Merry Christmas everyone! And may it mean a rich appreciation of God's love for each of us.

Gerard van Honthorst - Adoration by the Shepherds (1622) cropped

The Pill: death just one more downside

Differences between men and women remain profound.    Photo by Keira Burton

The sexual revolution that followed widespread access to the contraceptive pill had been a mixed blessing for women, writer Louise Perry said in an interview with Radio New Zealand's Sunday Morning programme. Her focus is mainly on the social impact of the pill on women's lives.

Also in New Zealand, a coronor's court hearing was held last week into the deaths of two women caused by complications in taking the contraceptive pill. The pill has been "the big technology shock" that drives the sexual revolution, according to Perry, and the consequences for women have been severe.

As it happens, women are also suffering from the impact of another technological "advance", one that that benefits men, namely viagra. For comment on how that is so, go here.

But the deaths of the New Zealand women, one 24, the other 17, shows that deviating from what is natural can involve life and death consequences. This from a news report:

A coroner has issued a warning to women taking the contraceptive pill, and to doctors prescribing it, after two young women died 10 days apart in similar circumstances.

Both women had a previously unknown blood clotting condition, which is exacerbated when taking the hormonal pill, increasing the risk of developing deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism by 35 times.

In light of moves in a few countries to make hormonal contraceptives available over the counter, the coroner's judgment is telling:  

Coroner Ho has now given a warning regarding use of the combined oral contraceptive pill, which he said, if brought to public attention, could reduce the chances of the occurrence of other deaths in circumstances similar to the two women.

While use of the combined oral contraceptive pill increases the risk of developing deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism in all women, the risk increases with family or personal history of blood clotting conditions – which women may not even be aware of, he said.

All women starting the combined oral contraceptive pill should be told that there is an increased risk of venous thromboembolism.

Also, all prescribers of the combined oral contraceptive pill, and other hormone related medications, should ensure they take a comprehensive clinical history and inform patients about the risks of venous thromboembolism, the seriousness of the condition and the symptoms to look out for, he said.

In addition, medical practitioners need to be vigilant about the possibility of venous thromboembolism, even where a woman appears to have few risk factors. 

Nonchalance about women's deaths is not acceptable.

Though society accepts there will be victims of technology deemed useful for its way of life, nonchalance about this is not acceptable.

To return to Perry's train of thought, a lot that has become generally acceptable in societies captured by the sexual revolution mentality is not fair for women.  Perry said this on the RNZ interview at the time of the publication of her book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: 

“The argument I make basically is that women have got a pretty raw deal, because on the one hand, we suffer all of the consequences, negative consequences, when sex goes wrong, in terms of things like unwanted pregnancies, and sexual violence overwhelmingly, is perpetrated by men against women.

“But we don't get nearly as many of the positive sides of it because it is more likely to be things like casual sex are much more likely to be enjoyed by men and less so by women. 

“And so, while I argue that there are obviously all sorts of benefits from the sexual revolution, crucially the pill, which is the big technology shock that drives all of this, and that women are now able to control their reproduction in a way that wasn't possible in the past, just because the technology didn't exist to allow us to.”

But, she says, there are “whole bunch of downsides on the social level.”

That's because the differences between men and women remain profound.

“I think that it was a mistake for some strains of feminism to assume that trying to imitate men, and specifically to imitate a kind of masculine style of sexuality, was necessarily aspirational for women.

“So, the idea that if we could just kind of let go of all of those old-fashioned norms and just be more free then that would necessarily result in women being happier. I don't think that has happened.”

The contraceptive pill hasn’t liberated women

Perry quotes a line in her book ‘when motherhood became a biological choice for women, fatherhood became a social choice for men’, and believes it is now more socially acceptable for men to walk away from their children and the mothers of their children.

“Particularly if they're conceived in kind of casual relationships, because the reasoning from these men and they'll say it pretty boldly sometimes, is well it was it was your fault for not using contraception properly, it was your fault for not getting an abortion. It's your problem now, basically. Which is obviously hugely destructive for the women who end up abandoned and their children most of all.”

It is ironic, she says, that a technology that allows women to take charge of their fertility would have led to an increase in single motherhood.

“You’d think it would be the opposite, wouldn't you? Because with a few exceptions, no woman would choose single motherhood; it is so difficult having to play the role of both mother and father. And we know that single mothers are much poorer than average, face all kinds of adversity.

“And yet that was precisely the effect of the pill.”

Social norms changed quickly

The pill rapidly changed societal norms in which young people lived, she says.

“The social norms that had existed to control horny young people, to put it bluntly, to keep them apart from one another, to control childbearing which was the function of all of these old fashioned norms often understood by feminists as being patriarchal and oppressive and of course they were that was one of their functions, one of their effects.

“But they also had other purposes around controlling the circumstances in which children were born and the environment in which they brought up in and when those norms were very, very rapidly destroyed at the same time as religion fading away in the West, you ended up with, for instance, the shotgun marriage just no longer serving any purpose whatsoever.

“And so, by the end of the 70s the shotgun marriage basically doesn't exist anymore.

“It's very, very rapid social change. And of course, it had benefits. But the argument that I'm making in the book is that it had a lot of downsides as well.”

Another voice on the failure of the feminist project 

Valerie M. Hudson, a distinguished professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, in reviewing Perry's book, writes: 

Ironically, although relatively effective and accessible contraception for women has been widely available since the 1960s, it has proved a double-edged sword for women. Contraception definitely helped women to obtain a much higher level of agency in their lives, which is all to the good, but at the same time there was one area in which women lost agency: The social ability to refuse a man casual sex.

Now sex is on men’s terms, and what ugly terms those turned out to be. As Perry puts it, many women today must pretend to derive pleasure from things they don’t want to do, and say they don’t mind when “friends with benefits” arrangements actually cause pain. It is plain, she writes, that “the sexual playing field is not equal, but it suits the interests of the powerful to pretend that it is.” Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows — and the minnows are, in the first place, female, and increasingly, the victims of the sexual “revolution” are children being sexually abused.

Perry doesn’t sugarcoat the antidote: Some desires are wrong, and they should be — even must be — repressed and not acted upon. The concept of “consent” is simply too low a bar, given the stakes. She argues for a new standard of sexual integrity, “one that recognizes other human beings as real people, invested with real value and dignity ... even if that means curtailing our freedoms.”

Rather than exercising agency “by having loveless, brusque sex with men they don’t like who show no regard for (them) and discard them immediately afterward,” women would realize, as most eventually do after significant harm, that “unwanted sex is worse than sexual frustration.” That “a truly feminist project would demand that it should be men, not women, who adjust their sexual appetites.”

A new ethic of sexual integrity, is needed. We need to be able to say that certain desires are wrong, and that there will be real accountability for the harm that pursuing them will cause. Consent is not enough and never can be when the playing field is so uneven. We need a better sexual revolution, one based on male sexual integrity, not male sexual license.

The WebMD website states: "Natural family planning is a form of birth control that doesn't involve pills or devices. As a result, it doesn't have side effects." More women are exploring that option, with the documentary The Business of Birth Control being one factor in highlighting the pharmaceutical industry's role in this area of potential harm to women's health and to their well-being in society.

Ω See also: Humanae Vitae, 1968. Also found here

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Happiness is the new snake oil

Mike King ... 'no such thing as perfect happiness'

Comedian turned mental health advocate and New Zealander of the Year Mike King has packed a lot into his 61 years. As well as his multiple roles on radio and TV over the years he is a dedicated family man and has six children. He became the New Zealand poker champion player and it was in that connection he travelled to Australia where he suffered a blood clot that brought him close to death. That scare was on top of his years-long cocaine addiction.

King is often in the media as a celebrity speaker but also in his role as a mental health advocate. Interviews that feature him get a lot of attention from the public because he has the ability to discuss serious matters directly, but with a nice touch of humour to make for a lively as well as worthwhile time.

The New Zealand Herald, the nation's largest newspaper/news website, featured King in an interview series of people of note in various fields, a kind of car karaoke, without the karaoke.

King came up trumps with his common sense approach to serious issues. He was asked, What is your idea of perfect happiness? His answer reflects his deep involvement in efforts to save kids from the effects of the new cultural forces weighing on them:

I love this question, because there is no such thing as perfect happiness, and constantly striving for it and talking about it is having a devastating effect on our kids’ mental health. Happiness is the new snake oil, and snake oil salesmen are trying to sell it to you.

This question is about what makes people really, really happy. But there’s a bit of a problem with the idea of “perfect happiness”, because it’s kind of like chasing after something that doesn’t really exist. Imagine it’s a bit like someone trying to sell you a magical potion, saying, “If you buy this, it will make you perfectly happy”.

In today’s world, there are lots of messages that tell us we can buy happiness. They make it seem like if you get a fancy car, the latest gadgets or follow certain trends, you’ll be super-happy all the time. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t work that way.

Happiness is a bit like a rollercoaster – it goes up and down. Sometimes you feel really happy, and other times, you don’t. And that’s okay; it’s part of being human.

The problem is when people keep chasing this idea of being “perfectly happy” all the time. It can actually make them feel worse about themselves because they can’t reach this impossible standard. This especially affects young people who feel pressured to be happy all the time, and that can lead to feeling stressed or sad.

So, instead of aiming for “perfect happiness”, it’s better to think of happiness as something you find along the way in your life journey. It’s about enjoying the good moments, accepting the tough ones, and not getting tricked by those who promise a quick fix for happiness. Remember, it’s okay not to be happy all the time – that’s just part of being human.

What’s the one word to sum up your mood right now?

In a word? Hopeful. It’s clear New Zealand has changed a lot recently. There’s this growing sense that we’re putting people in boxes based on their beliefs or affiliations. More and more, it feels like we’re in our own bubbles, hearing only what we want to hear.

But even with all that, I’m optimistic. I think there’s always a chance for understanding and unity. It’s my hope that New Zealanders can embrace diverse opinions, find common ground and remember the power of true community. 

What do you hope/think NZ will look like in 10 years?

I began with this idea, and I’ll conclude with it: my hope is for a more united and cohesive society. I’ve never witnessed our beautiful country more divided than it is now, and it’s disheartening. It seems that we have lost our connection to humanity, leading us to judge one another based on surface-level differences instead of seeking to understand each other’s perspectives.

The recent election serves as a stark illustration of this division, with people from all sides hurling accusations and failing to truly listen to one another. It’s evident to me that people feel unheard by those in power because in everyday conversations, we increasingly hear sighs of resignation, with people saying, “Well, what can you do?”

When we feel like our voice is lost, we tend to gravitate toward like-minded individuals who share our views. This creates echo chambers where we continually hear the same opinions. We’re pushed to view those with differing perspectives as adversarial. We’re no longer exposed to a range of viewpoints, which means we miss the chance to empathise with and appreciate other people’s journeys.

Unless we actively work to understand one another and prioritise unity over division in the years ahead, the consequences for the next generation could be devastating.

Elsewhere, King is reported as saying that his charity organisation, a free counselling service for any person aged 25 and under, has encountered soaring demand for its services, up by more than 500 per cent in just two years.

Ω More voices as part of the interview series

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Bible publishers, restore the Apocrypha!

Judith with the head of Holofernes by Benvenuto Tisi da Garafalo (1481-1559). 

Publishers, restore the Apocrypha to your Bibles! Give readers access to these spiritual treasures!

The Apocrypha, or more precisely the Deuterocanon, refers to those books and passages of the Old and New Testaments about which there was controversy at one time in early Christian history, with disputes  reviving just before and within the Reformation period. The Church has historically included these as wholly part of its canon of inspired writings: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus (Sirach), Baruch, I and II Maccabees, parts of Esther (10:4-16, 14), and Daniel (3:24-90, 13, 14). 

These books were included in almost every Protestant Bible until the Edinburgh Committee of the British Foreign Bible Society excised them in 1825. Until then, they had been included at least in an appendix of Bibles.  As to the present, there is no excuse for publishers not including the Apocrypha, at least in study Bibles, even if it does affect the cost-profit equation. 

We note these points:

At the Council of Rome in 382, the Church decided upon a canon of 46 Old Testament books and 27 in the New Testament. This decision was ratified by the councils at Hippo (393), Carthage (397, 419), II Nicea (787), Florence (1442), and Trent (1546). 

Even when that list was established in A.D. 382, the writings were not collected into a single book until after the printing press came into existence. Even Gutenberg’s Bible was published in more than one volume.

Martin Luther included them in his first German translation, published before the Council of Trent. They can also be found in the first King James Version (1611) and in the first Bible ever printed, the Gutenberg Bible (a century before Trent). In fact, these books were included in almost every Bible until the Edinburgh Committee of the British Foreign Bible Society excised them in 1825. Until then, they had been included at least in an appendix of Protestant Bibles.  —  Source 

Until publishers come to the aid of all Christians and remove this barrier to our ability to tap the wisdom of God-fearing people of the Old Testament era we must act independently. I offer here a means of access to those special texts. Naturally, given the circumstances, I provide links to a Catholic Bible, so-called because it contains those texts that have borne the weight of the contention referred to above.

For the purposes of this exercise I utilise the Gateway facility, which makes available the New Catholic Bible (published 2019), a boon to those seeking to know God's word well. That is because the NCB provides introductions and footnotes to help the reader understand God's message as communicated in diverse human ways.

First, in the traditional order of the Bible's sequence of The Pentateuch, The Historical Books, The Wisdom Books, and then The Prophets, is the heart-warming "historical" account of the righteous Tobit and his family. As is Tobit and Esther, Judith is presented as a theological consideration of the history of  the people of God.

[[[ In Historical Books ]]]

Tobit: Link to Introduction: Go here

Tobit: Link to Chapter 1: Go here  

Judith: Introduction: Go here 

Judith: Chapter 1: Go here 

Esther: Introduction: Go here 

Esther: Chapter 1: Go here, but note the key chapters and verses

1 Maccabees: Introduction: Go here 

1 Maccabees: Chapter 1: Go here 

2 Maccabees: Introduction: Go here 

2 Maccabees: Chapter 1: Go here 

[[[ In Wisdom Books ]]]

Wisdom: Introduction: Go here 

Wisdom: Chapter 1: Go here 

Sirach, also known as Ecclesiasticus, or Wisdom of Ben Sira: Introduction: Go here

Sirach: Chapter 1: Go here

[[[ In Prophets ]]]

Daniel: Introduction: Go here

Daniel: Chapter 1: Go here, but note key chapters and verses

That's it! Of course there is a large number of other texts from the Old Testament era and especially  New Testament times that the Church has had to weigh for authenticity. But the texts that have been part of the canon, that Jerome himself abided by in an idiosyncratic fashion, are God-given to bring us closer to Him. Church leaders and publishers need to put aside the urge to wage doctrinal battles and seek to accomplish God's plan of offering spiritual riches. Restore what has been lost!

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