News Item: : Saul, Saul, Why Persecutest Thou Me? (Acts 9:4)
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
Posted by admin
Monday 10 April 2017 - 11:03:26

It is bad enough when wolves come disguised in sheep's clothing; but something altogether more grave when they come in the garb of the shepherd.

Update: For a more fair understanding of what Archbishop Scicluna said, this article needs to be read in light of the update issued in the subsequent article after Malta Today pulled their original description of their interview!

The Catechism of the Catholic Church provides a very clear explanation of the problem of scandal. This is dealt with under a subheading entitled, Respect for the Souls of Others: Scandal.

It reads as follows:

CCC 2284: Scandal is an attitude or behaviour which leads another to do evil. The person who gives scandal becomes his neighbour's tempter. He damages virtue and integrity; he may even draw his brother into spiritual death. Scandal is a grave offence if, by deed or omission, another is deliberately led into a grave offence.

CCC 2285: Scandal takes on a particular gravity by reason of the authority of those who cause it, or the weakness of those who are scandalized. It prompted Our Lord to utter this curse: ''Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and be drowned in the depth of the sea.'' Scandal is grave when given by those who, by nature or office, are obliged to teach and educate others. Jesus reproaches the Scribes and Pharisees on this account: He likens them to wolves in sheep's clothing.

The cup must already be overflowing with the scandal that has been given during the last four years.

Certainly, the problems with Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia, and the weird silence of almost all of the Hierarchy in the face of those problems during the course of an entire year, have led to us all struggling to survive spiritually in a veritable swamp of scandal.

That scandal only increased towards the end of last week when it was announced that Cardinal Baldisseri had passed on Pope Francis' words of gratitude to those Judas-Bishops Scicluna and Grech, of Malta and Gozo, for their sacrilegious ''guidelines'' regarding the implementation of Amoris Laetitia in their respective dioceses.

Perhaps finding himself to be on a roll with the support of Francis, Scicluna piled on another layer of scandal during an interview he gave about contraception to Maltese TV's Xtra on TVM.

During that interview, Scicluna said: ''One must remember that the Church has always placed the argument in the context of marriage; and it holds on to the tenet of sex belonging within the marriage... What we are saying is that if you have to use a contraceptive, make sure it is not one that kills life.''

Of course, whilst the Archbishop did attempt to make some kind of distinction between those forms of contraceptive which are abortifacient, and those which are not, he still failed spectactularly to point out the fact that all forms of contraception are gravely against the Natural and Divine Law, which the Catholic Church upholds. Worse than that, he actually endorsed contraception use in marriage for ''those who have to use a contraceptive''. One can already detect echoes of Ch. 8 of Amoris Laetitia in that statement.

Indeed, as we shall now see, those echoes become still clearer.  

Since making those statements on Maltese television, the Archdiocese of Malta has attempted to soften the blow in two ways.

In the first instance, they affirmed Scicluna's differentiation between abortifacients and non-abortifacients, as well as drawing on Amoris Laetitia 222a. However, their use of this latter tried to argue for primacy of conscience in moral decisions. Of course, that leaves out the fact that each person and couple has a grave moral duty to both inform and form that conscience with the objective truth of the Church's true teachings.

Therefore, this first follow-up to Scicluna's media interview will only have served to muddy the waters still more for many people who have not been sufficiently catechized to recognize this for what it is.

The second follow-up by the Archdiocese of Malta appears to have come in the form of a response to a question posed to the Archbishop by the Church Militant TV group. This response was written by the Archdiocese of Malta's spokesman, Kevin Papagiorcopulo. At least in this instance, a more straightforward answer is given: ''In reply to your question, the Archbishop believes and teaches that the use of artificial birth control in marriage, whether abortifacient or not, is always wrong.''

Whilst that is a positive thing to hear, it will do little to correct the opposite impression which Scicluna gave on TVM's Xtra show; and which has since done the rounds of headlines and articles across the globe.

As a result, countless numbers of couples and other observers around the world, the majority of whom will never get to hear of Papagiorcopulo's answer, have been left with the false impression that Pope Francis' chum Scicluna has said that it is now OK to contracept, as long as this is only done in marriage and with the avoidance of abortifacients. Only a clear and direct statement from Scicluna himself could put that right.

To make matters still worse, Scicluna's interview also included an exchange in which he stated: ''We must also make a clear distinction between abortive products and contraceptive pills... But it is not my role to identify which brand of pill is good and which isn't, because the role of the archbishop is not to replace science.''

The back-drop to that unnecessarily complicated cop-out is the fact that, even though abortion is illegal in Malta, the so-called Morning-After-Pill was recently permitted in the midst of an argument over its abortifacient nature.

In contrast to Scicluna's attempt to subtly nuance the argument, it has always been our understanding that almost all contraceptive pills, including the mini-pill, regular contraceptive pill and Morning-After-Pill, included an abortifacient component in their construction.

Indeed, the fact that women are seldom told about any of this has even led people as radical as Germain Greer to protest!

In his excellent book, Who is at the Centre of Your Marriage - The Pill or Jesus Christ?, Patrick McCrystal, the former pharmacist and now head of HLI Ireland, states: ''Every chemical contraceptive preparation involving pills, injections, implants and intrauterine devices inherently employs this mechanism as part of its overall mode of action.''

This means that women using these means will likely, at some point in their fertile life, cause the chemical abortion of their offspring. As Patrick's book suggests: ''It is hard to quantify just how many embryos are lost through the abortifacient action of contraceptives at the implantation stage, but it has been estimated that a silent chemical abortion happens once in about 200 menstrual cycles for a woman continually on the combined Pill... The fact that millions of women use these contraceptive methods implies that these chemical abortions must run into millions worldwide.''

Elsewhere, Patrick affirms that ''break-through'' cycles, those when ovulation can happen in spite of contraception use, can occur in anything from 0% to 60% of those cycles depending on the type of pill used. ''The abortifacient mechanism is thus enabled should conception occur during any of these break-through cycles.''

As Patrick acknowledges in his book, many women and couples are horrified when they learn of this abortifacient aspect. 

 

Between 2008 and 2012, we used to go around the UK giving catechesis on chastity and marriage to engaged couples, young adult students and RCIA groups. During those presentations we frequently gave away copies of Patrick's fine book. We did this because it so clearly sets out the spiritual, ethical and relational reasons why all forms of contraception are such a bad thing.

Indeed, the sub-heading to that book is, Contraception's Disintegrating Effect on Marital Harmony.

That book is a particularly powerful resource, because of Patrick's pharmaceutical background. It also contains powerful testimonies of various married couples, whose love and marriages were damaged by contraception, but then restored again through the grace of Confession and rejection of the contraceptive mentality.

Although the likes of Kevin Papagiorcopulo have done their level best to present Scicluna's TV interview in an orthodox light, it remains the case that the actual content of his interview, and the initial follow up which drew on Amoris Laetitia, directly contradict the Church's perennial teaching on the intrinsically evil nature of contraception, and on the place and nature of individual conscience in the moral sphere. These matters have, for example, been clearly set forth in Magisterial papal documents such as Humanae Vitae, Fides et Ratio, Veritatis Spendor and Evangelium Vitae.

Because the news of Scicluna's interview has gone all around the world, it is up to him to correct it in public.

As this seems unlikely to happen, let me say again what I have already said here before: contraception is offensive to God and makes of the spouse and the self mere objects of use; and it is therefore destructive of marital love and harmony.

As such, no-one who truly loved God, loved their spouse, loved themselves and understood the objective truth clearly and freely, would ever wish to resort to contraception.

This has been written to assist all who read it, including married couples who have the misfortune to live under Archbishop Scicluna's faulty leadership, in coming to the freedom of Christ's truth (John 8:32).

In the end, Archbishop Scicluna - and please hear this coming from a married Catholic layman - it is a question of love.

May the Holy Family - Pray for us!

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This news item is from Torch of The Faith
( http://www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?extend.1607 )