On the Smoke of Modernism

AS is well known to all but those who choose not to see, the broken or irregular home has gone from being the exception to the rule.

The family is the building block upon which all secular and Christian civilization is built. Marriage is a divine and natural institution perfectly portrayed by Christ the bridegroom and His Church, the bride. Though the world has been trying to change both, we find ourselves with a gap between how the world sees family and marriage and what the Church knows about them.

The Fourteenth General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops took place from October 4 to October 25, 2015, in Vatican City. While it is inspiring that the Church fathers are attempting to develop pastoral solutions to the overwhelming problems we face as a global society concerning marriage and family, it is rewarding to know the roots of the problems that we face. If we untangle the modernism on both topics we will discover that the problem lies in the contraceptive mindset.

As I discuss in The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God, after successfully work of separating rights from duties by the spirit of rebellion, Satan’s most profound work was to separate the marital act from its primary ends of procreation and unity. It is a diabolical inversion of reality that the third end of the marital act, that of the pleasure that flows from the marital act, is claimed by modern man to be the “new” primary end. This makes God’s primary end of procreation an inhibition to seekers of the new false primary end, and therefore something to be eliminated by technique or technology. The modern world has become obsessed with that task.

My argument in the book is that Paul VI was prophetic in asserting that contraception is at the root of family crises in the modern age, and this teaching has been obscured by the modern philosophy flowing from the sexual revolution. In 1968, when he published his encyclical Humanae Vitae, the world was expecting a change in Church teaching, much like many are expecting changes in Church teaching from the Synod. The Church’s teaching on contraception is absolute, because the law against it is divine and natural. It is demonstrated from the beginning, through the episode of Onan (Genesis 38:8-10) through the Apostle’s first catechism (the Didache), and re-stated in every catechism put forth by the Church.

To be continued….

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