Culture of Life

We look back to the times of Jesus, Mary and Joseph….yes, Christmas time when they cared lovingly for the baby Jesus. So Christmas is a celebration of life, as Mary and Joseph endeavored to save the Christ child from the clutches of King Herod who wanted to end the life of the child. What for? For political reasons, power, greed, and dominance.

Let us reminisce how history can repeat itself, those days of genocide since the very days of Moses, when the Egyptian king wanted to eliminate all male children (see Ex. 1:22), then the murder of the Holy Innocents by King Herod, then the Holocaust of millions of Jews by Hitler’s Nazi regime, the 40 million communistic purges by Stalin in Russia and neighboring countries, and in our very day the continuing holocaust and murders by the millions of abortions throughout the world. Let’s not forget that murder (including abortion) is part of the 4 sins crying to heaven for vengeance. They are, namely: willful murder (including abortion), the sin of Sodom, oppression of the poor, defrauding laborers of their wages.

Probably the sin of Sodom could be at the background and bottom line for many delusory efforts of today to make use of abortion and contraceptives to conceal and hide immoral practices including sodomist practices. The Webster dictionary describes Sodomy as follows: a) copulation with a member of the same sex or with an animal b) noncoital and esp. anal or oral copulation with a member of the opposite sex.

The Catholic Church issues guidelines on sexual practices, because such faculty has been instituted by God for the perpetuation of the human race, not specifically for pleasure. So the Church considers masturbation as a practice that is grievously and intrinsically disordered (see document – Declaration of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith concerning certain questions of sexual ethics, December 29, 1975, no. 9). Several texts from St. Paul show us how sexual immoralities may impede us from entrance to heaven. “When self-indulgence is at work the results are obvious: fornication, gross indecency and sexual irresponsibility; idolatry and sorcery; feuds and wrangling, jealousy, bad temper and quarrels; disagreements, factions, envy; drunkenness, orgies and similar things. I warn you now, as I warned you before: those who behave like this will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:19-22; see also 1 Cor. 6:9-11; Eph. 5:1-20). Remember that when God punished Sodom and Gomorrah the two towns disappeared from the map (see Gen. 19). As St. Paul says in Heb. 10:31, “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” If we look for victory in our world, it is because we endeavor to be on the side of truth, while the “devil is a murderer and the father of lies and deception” (see Jn. 8:44).