Guest Column by Brian Clowes, PhD

Dr.  Clowes is Human Life International’s Director of Research and Training

As Christmas approaches my hope for you is that you have ample time, and that you take advantage of it, to prepare your heart for Jesus’ coming.  Find the time to steal away to some quiet reverie with the Lord.  Look for God in your life.  Seek Him in the quiet of your soul.  Feel his presence with you and in you.

I found a note I wrote to my office staff in June 2001, portions of which I want to share with you at this time.  It seems appropriate as we move through this season of looking.  You’ll undoubtedly recall the sad event that had happened in Texas at that time; it remained in the national news for some time:  a young mother had drowned her children in the bathtub of their Texas home.  Here is what I wrote to my staff.

June 23, 2001 Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

The gospel reading at Mass this morning was from Luke – the finding of the Child Jesus in the temple and the distress that Mary felt at having lost her child, even if the loss was temporary.

My mind goes directly to Texas, what’s left of the Evans family, and the distress that a young mother must feel at her action of having drowned her children last week.  I cant’ help but also ponder the terror of the seven year old as his mother chased him around the house before she drowned him.  What makes this massacre particularly uncomfortable (apart from the school shootings, and other events that have occurred in recent years) is the fact that, in this case, it was the children’s mother who methodically killed them one by one.  This occurrence has affected me deeply and I see it as another signal about the extreme need our society has for people like each of you. Evil does exist and it reared its ugly face again in the loss of the Evans children.

Our society is bleeding, and the notion that a mother can kill her living children, no matter how psychotic she may have been, stems directly from the notion that, had those children been in her womb, it would been entirely legal for her to kill them without scrutiny.  Even more profoundly, (and this is a truth that is seldom articulated, but applicable in many other situations) contraception, because of its anti-life foundation, is a root source of the thought process that has ultimately resulted in the many unfortunate events in our society in recent years, like that which has occurred in Texas.  The issue is bigger than this isolated incident.

I echo a sentiment that has long been understood by the Church, and was made manifest by the Holy Father, Pope Paul VI, in his 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae.  He pinned the responsibility for the current culture of death in which we live directly on the practice of contraception.  Our society is infected with an attitude that life is cheap; someone (a child) becomes too much of a burden and that someone promptly ceases to exist.  It’s an outgrowth of the notion that, because of my life may be too busy, or the process may cost too much, or the result of my selfish action is simply unwanted, I can somehow stop life from happening by contracepting the action that God designed for creation of life!

Horrors like the Texas murders are not new to humanity.  They are, however, to be understood in the context of our time:  we should be galvanized in our hearts about the Truth of the evil of contraception and its soul mate, abortion.

We cannot change circumstances in Texas.  We can, with God’s help, change circumstances beginning in and with our own hearts.  No matter how much it may seem that society doesn’t “get it” (and may never get it!) we cannot be discouraged.  There is tremendous hope in His resurrection, and like the Immaculate Heart of Mary, we must hold on to that hope in the face of the most severe of trials.  Mary never stopped looking for her Son during those three days in Jerusalem.  She never left His side as she, years later, watched Him hang on the Cross.  Let us never stop looking for Him in the lives of the people we serve, in spite of the sometimes overwhelming suggestion that He isn’t there.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

I just read a headline yesterday describing a father who killed his two young children and dumped their bodies in trash bags in nearby woods.

The societal bleeding continues and my heart screams, “Why?”

“Why” has everything to do with contraception and abortion, it’s true.  Let us ask God to continue the battle on His behalf, for the sake of His children and for the sake of His infinite love for and mercy on us.

Look for Jesus, just as Mary looked for Him during those three days in Jerusalem.  He is.

August 23, 2010

Luke, in the ninth chapter of his Gospel, relates the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand with five loaves and two fish.  You recall the story, I am sure.  The disciples were a bit incredulous when He asked them to have the crowd sit in groups of about fifty.  Let’s see . . . that’s about 100 groups of fifty!  And the story relates only the number of men.  It’s not unreasonable to think that there were about that many women and some children, too!  Let’s say, conservatively, there were 200 groups of fifty.  On a hillside.  With only five loaves of bread and two fishes.

I can just hear my fourteen year old son, Thomas’, response to this:  “Yeah, right, Dad!”  “Like if I’m s’pose to believe that!”

I’m sure that I would have stood on that hillside for a moment and just looked dumb.  How can it be possible to feed so many with so little?

There are times to be intellectual about things, and there are times to move with faith and a bit of reckless abandon.  That hillside experience called for faith and reckless abandon.

I’ve always found this story a bit amusing.  The amusing part is really the abundance of food!  Our God is a God of excess!  He doesn’t just bless us.  He really blesses us.  Abundantly!  So it was on the mountain that day near Bethsaida.  After everyone had eaten their fill, the disciples gathered twelve baskets of food.  Twelve baskets!!!  Think about it.  If each basket were to have been capable of holding, say, even two loaves of bread and three or four fish . . . well just imagine what such an abundance of food must have been to those five thousand people.

If you expect to receive the miraculous, be ready to do the ridiculous.  No doubt the disciples, when faced with feeding 5000 (plus!) with only five loaves and two fish felt a bit ridiculous, yet, it happened.  And it was abundant!

In these changing times in the world of medicine, we will be called upon more than ever to live a life of faith.  It will take faith to navigate the changes that will no doubt come about as a result of ObamaCare.  Faith and courage on the part of patients and providers alike.  In fact, as providers, perhaps what we will be able to do foremost for our patients might be to live examples of faith.  God will feed us, as surely as He fed the five thousand on the hillside. 

Do not be afraid when you find yourself with the equivalent of five loaves and two fish, facing 5000 hungry mouths.  Do the ridiculous.  Listen to God’s direction in your life.  You won’t have room for the leftovers!

August 6, 2010

Entitlement.  It has become the social illness of the New Millennium.  Rooted firmly in the contraceptive mentality of a society that has grown up viewing children as “possessions,” entitlement reflects a dearth of humility.   “I am, therefore I deserve,” might be a plausible mantra.  Entitlement is pervasive today.  A society with little to no understanding about life as a gift from the Creator Himself and less understanding about the importance to humanity of the virtues of charity and sacrifice finds itself smack in the middle of a new plague:  the inability to manage its own self-centeredness.  Society infested with rampant entitlement is doomed to extinction.

We could learn from the Canaanite woman in Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 15.  Being Canaanite, she was an outsider, yet she approached Jesus with a plea on her daughter’s behalf.  “Heal her,” she begged.  Jesus’ disciples simply wanted Him to be rid of her.  They found her presence an annoyance.  At her persistence, Jesus told the woman that it was not right to take the food of sons and daughters and give it to dogs.

Imagine the response such a remark would get from many in today’s world!  Manifest indignation!  Why, the Lord might even be beaten up for such a comment today!  To think that someone might possess something to which I am not entitled just because I live and breathe!  An outrage!

But the Canaanite woman, with deep humility (and certainly void of any sense of entitlement!) replied to the Lord that even dogs eat the scraps from their master’s tables.  Wow!  Note that she wasn’t even begging on her own behalf, but on behalf of her daughter who was afflicted with a demon.  She knew to whom she was talking, and she certainly knew her place before Him.  We would do well to contemplate this exchange for a moment or two.  Her example is simply breathtaking; it invites love and compassion.  It causes me to want to say out loud, “You go, girl!”  I want to cheer for her because of her humility.  She knows that she doesn’t deserve that for which she is asking!  Yet, she asks anyway because what she knows is the Love to whom she speaks.

Jesus capitulated, “Because of your great faith, woman, your request is granted.”  At other points in scripture Her daughter was healed.

I don’t think I possess the humility of the Canaanite woman.  I want it.

Children’s lives are grace for their parents.  Children’s lives are blessings of Our Father and pathways to humility.  It is not the sacrifice that parents make to obtain material things for their children that matters.  What really matters is the sacrifice parents make to themselves before their Creator in remaining open to new life and all that it takes to love it, cherish it, nurture it, discipline it, and help that life to know God.

Contraception renders the ability to make such a sacrifice impossible.  It breeds selfishness and self-centeredness.  It fosters a sense of entitlement.  The end result is inescapable, no matter how big the compensatory effort or how forceful the rationalization.

Get your Bible.  Look at Matthew 15:21-28.  Ponder the Canaanite woman and her humility. 

Lord, help me to be like the Canaanite woman You blessed in the district of Tyre and Sidon.   Purge me, Lord, of any sense of entitlement.  Amen!

June 27, 2010

St. Padre Pio was reported to have said when he got his first look at the television: “The devil will be in the living room.”

He is also manifestly a “live in” companion in the lives of many including some of our self- destructive celebrities.

How else to explain the recent behavior of our fallen brother in Christ, Mel Gibson?

Remember the time that preceded the release of The Passion of The Christ?  The main stream media and other critics maligned the very thought of it along with its producer, Mel Gibson.  After the release of the film the attacks continued to escalate.  I remember at the time thinking how strong Mel Gibson stood in the face of all of this.  At the height of the attacks I recall feeling the gratitude toward Mel that a mother would feel toward a courageous fireman who had run into a burning building and carried her child, her precious treasure, to safety.  Mel has successfully done this with the greatest of treasures. After years and years of heinous blasphemy against our Lord and our Faith repeatedly played out across the Big Screen, there was Mel lending all of his God-given talents to set the record straight.  Mel Gibson had truly gone into the burning building of Hollywood and carried “Truth” Himself through the ruinous and diabolical flames.

I was saddened and taken aback when, in a drunken rage, Mel spewed venomous anti-Semitic remarks to a policeman.  This sadness and shock was compounded further when he left his wife and 7 children.

For those that understand the battle between Good and Evil, clearly, Mel Gibson is battling demons.

The Passion of The Christ was a work of grace. It had a transcendent quality that lent it a raw power to spark belief in an age of unbelief.  It is indeed hard to think of any other work of such singular artistry in our time that bore as much fruit as this seminal masterpiece of our beloved Lord’s final hours on earth.

One website alone had over 27,000 stories of personal testimonials and conversions from Jews, Muslims, and non-Catholic Christians. This was a drop in the bucket in comparison to the millions who felt the grace after watching the film. 

After hearing from so many family members of those in prisons, Mel honored the request to take this tool of healing into the prison system. Again, more tears of conversion and spiritual awakening flowed.   The Passion of The Christ touched and transformed the hearts of hardened criminals by the thousands when Mel subsequently donated a copy of the DVD to prisons across the country.

At the same time, Mel honored a request to have the film taken over to Sr. Lucia of Fatima.  After viewing this, Sr. Lucia, then in her late 80’s said, “It is the reality”.

This statement was never made public until this column.

All of this bore a cost, however.

It put a bulls eye on Mel Gibson’s chest and demonic sharp shooters have been taking deadly aim ever since. One might imagine that Gibson’s own soul would be a prized asset on a diabolical balance sheet.

In his new book, Exorcism and the Church Militant, HLI president Fr. Tom Euteneuer refers to the work of saving souls as involving “hand to hand combat with the devil himself.” He distinguishes carefully between souls who are “oppressed” by demonic spirits which is not uncommon and souls who are “possessed” by one or more demons which, he says, is most uncommon. It is the design of the devil to seek to destroy in hate what God has created in love. His work is often to simply suggest a course of action and let man’s fallen nature take it from there. Exorcists say Satan frequently takes up residence in emotionally unbalanced souls and hides knowing it is most difficult to discern where disorder ends and oppression begins.

Mel Gibson has not always been sparing of the Roman Catholic Church. And his behavior in recent years is clearly indefensible. But he is a brother in Christ who answered “yes” to God’s call to make this powerful film.  At the time he “risked everything for the Gospel.”    

I recall him once saying: “If you are going to defend the cross, get ready to carry a piece of it.”

He has carried a piece of the cross. He has stumbled and fallen.  He, no doubt is suffocating in depression and confusion.  (Satan’s powerful tool s used to demoralize us all). Today, I ask your prayers and spiritual assistance in carrying him out of Satan’s burning building of despair which seeks to destroy and own him.

Contemplate the cleverness of Satan.  Who could have imagined 50 years ago that he would have found his way into 98% of the bedrooms of married couples with their willing cooperation through contraception?  Who could have imagined that full term babies being slaughtered just moments before birth would be called “an act of privacy” for women in the year 2010? Who could have imagined the propaganda in the media today telling parents they would be happier without children?  Or with only 2 children?  Who would have thought it possible for an entire generation to be raised ignorant of the Truth of God and now as adults stand impotent to defend It? 

Answer:  The same Evil One who seeks to find each of our individual weaknesses (depression, loneliness, anger, marital discord, or human pride) to move us to a place of torment where the world now sees Mel Gibson standing.

It is only by calling upon the tools we are given in sacramental grace and prayer that we are able to get up when we fall, repent, and continue to follow Christ in all of our human weakness. This, my friends, is what we are called through the Gospels “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).

In the words of Sr. Lucia:  “It is the Reality”.

With the release of the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, the past few days we have seen the analysis of women who are having (and not having) children.  According to Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, the highest group of women on track for loneliness in their twilight years due to ‘childlessness’ are White women (20%).  Not too far behind comes Black and Hispanic women (17%) followed closely by  Asian women (16%).

I have to take note at the presentation of these facts.  D’Vera Cohn, one of the co-authors of the report echos the verbiage that women have heard over the past 50 years that have led them down the path of barrenness.  She states that “education seems to be a factor in a woman’s choice to be a mother.  The more educated  women are, the higher the childless rate is”.  This comment is completely contradicted by some of the results which report that the ‘childlessness’ rate has decreased for women with advanced degrees from 31% in 1994 to 24% in 2008.

Unfortunately, what you do not see in this study is an analysis of the “post contraceptive regret” that is prevalent among all ethnic groups of women.

How do I know this?

First hand testimony and Nursing experience.

Ask any mom of a large family and she will tell you that women often approach us in public when they see our many children and express sadness and remorse or tell (a perfect stranger) why it is that she wanted to have more children “but……….”

Over the years as a Registered Nurse, I experienced a steady pattern of women who shared their gut-wrenching stories of pain and sadness from their choice at a young age to not have children.

Some were sterilized even before having even one child.

I also witnessed  Nursing homes where older women, sit staring with a far away blank look on their faces while rocking a baby doll for consolation.  These Nursing homes and Retirement centers are now prisons of loneliness.  The inmates go day after day and week after week with no children or grandchildren to visit them.  They live a self imposed life sentence with the burning regret over the children they willingly prevented or aborted.

When I was a child we lived 5 doors from St. Margaret of Cortona church.  I recall how often we would walk down the street during Lent to frequently attend the Stations of the Cross.  It is not until recently that I have been able to fully grasp what was meant by Our Lord as he met the women of Jerusalem on the way to the Cross:

“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.  For behold, the days are coming when they will say, “Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed!”

That is exactly what the media is saying to us when we are told, “Women have more options than in the past  to build strong careers and to exercise the choice not to have children”.  More words of wisdom from D’Vara Cohn.

Unfortunately, the current numbers on ‘childlessness’ account for those who bought into the myth that contraception and abortion would liberate them for an awesome career in a ‘man’s world’.   It’s time to ask them if giving up motherhood was well worth the fulfillment they were promised.  It is in their honest and tearful responses that we will find the answer to our question: “Women,…..where are your children?”.

In the silence of their hearts, women are indeed weeping.

June 18, 2010

Who would have ever guessed that contraception would move center stage in the women’s health and the political arena in 2010?  Last week the New York Post reported that a “Wicked” actress sued Bayer pharmaceutical company claiming the popular birth control Yaz caused her to have a stroke at age 27.  According to the US Drug Watchdog the serious side effects of birth control pills such as Yaz and Yasmin are potentially putting millions of women at risk for stroke, heart attack and even death.  Also woman who have used the pill are now showing up in their 30’s with breast cancer (prior to the pill breast cancer was a post-menopausal women’s disease).  Next time you are at the pharmacy ask for the insert information inside the very box that is provided to the consumer when they purchase a contraceptive.  On NuvaRing’s website (a common contraceptive) risks associated with the drug include blood clots, strokes, heart attacks, high blood pressure, heart disease, gallbladder disease, liver tumors, and cancer of the reproductive organs and breasts.

How many doctors are telling women who go in for contraceptives these stunning statistics?  Women who use hormonal contraceptives for a minimum of 4 years prior to their first full term pregnancy have a 52% higher risk of developing breast cancer (Mayo Clinic Proceedings).  Women who use a hormonal contraceptive for more then 5 yrs are 4 times more likely to develop cervical cancer (International Agency of Research on Cancer).  Instead many doctors convince married and single woman to go on contraceptives when they go into the office.

Natural Family Planning (NFP) is a highly reliable form of not only spacing children but helping couples to conceive.  Recent studies have shown it to be 99% effective.  It’s amazing more doctors aren’t encouraging their patients to effectively use NFP that has no risks associated.

Now—-as the undeniable medical evidence mounts which confirms the damage contraceptives have and continue to do to women’s health one may ask why for years mainstream and even pro-life organizations have ignored this.  In addition, it has been revealed that our elected official are trying to force our tax dollars to pay for birth control under “preventative” medicine that tax payers and insurers will be forced to pay under the Affordable Care Act.  It is time that every pro-life organization stands up and resist with all our might.  Not only are these contraceptives damaging to women’s health, but these class A-1 carcinogens are also causing chemical abortions (in excess of 250 million since the 1960′s). For every U.S. child born an estimated 2 children are killed in the womb from surgical abortion and abortifacient contraceptives (National Center for Health Statistics Division of CDC, 2003; International Pharmacists for Life, 2003).  It’s clear that it is time for expansive and comprehensive education against contraception use. The very life and health of women and the country depend on it. As we watch this all play out it is easy to think that “Crazy is the New Normal”…….sex outside of marriage, doctors prescribing class A1 carcinogens and women, through hormonal contraceptives, chemically aborting possibly one baby every month.

That’s definitely CRAZY. But it will never be normal.