By Judie Brown
Degenerate: to become morally corrupt
America is rapidly becoming an apathetic mass of humanity. Because of this moral stupor of the populace, the devil is having a hay day. The majority of folks have become so distracted by their personal concerns that any moral inconsistency can move undetected into the nation’s consciousness and be accepted as truth.
This should alarm those of us who strive daily to defend faith, life, and love—the very essence of what it means to be a human being. As Catholics, we can trace a straight line from the abandonment of Pope Paul VI’s 1968 Humanae Vitae encyclical to the current crisis and see the ugly twists and turns that have brought us here.
We begin with the American Psychological Association, who has created a task force to examine the theory that “monogamy is the new bigotry.” In other words, the one man one woman marriage is no longer acceptable. The APA “Task Force on Consensual Non-Monogamy promotes awareness and inclusivity about consensual non-monogamy and diverse expressions of intimate relationships.”
Many wise men saw this coming. Professor Robert George warned a few years ago that once same-sex marriage becomes widely accepted, polyamory (having more than one open romantic relationship at a time) will be legitimized as well.
Could this be why the LGBTQ community protested the availability of books written by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi? Nicolosi, who died in 2017, was a psychologist and reparative therapy expert whose works were dedicated to helping those who wanted to be healed of their urges toward homosexuality. A devout Catholic, he helped thousands of people. However, his work created rage in the LGBTQ community, and they succeeded in having Nicolosi’s books taken off of the Amazon.com website. So much for freedom of speech!
America’s apathetic mass of humanity has also embraced the cruel killing of the innocent preborn. Abortion is, after all, another result of absolute disregard for the gift of human sexuality and the procreation of children.
A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 60 percent of Americans believe that “abortion should be legal in all or most cases.” The truth is, if you take this finding to its logical conclusion, it is clear that the pro-life effort to save babies is losing after 40-plus years of trying. Why?
The answer is a simple one. Too many pro-lifers still believe in the so-called incremental approach. Such people embrace abortions for rape, incest, and life of the mother, defining them as “usual.”
That is a losing strategy. If we are not committed to saving every single preborn child, we will never convince the average, apathetic person that he or she should actually care about the babies who die when abortions are committed.
The relationship that exists between tossing out respect for marriage, advocating for same-sex relationships, and killing the preborn is clear. It is also obvious that America’s apathetic mass of humanity has been manipulated into accepting a perverse agenda that denigrates all that is morally good about the human family.
This brings us right back to Humanae Vitae, the prophetic encyclical written by Pope Paul VI 51 years ago.
When procreative sex is separated from marriage, free-wheeling sex with multiple partners—often at the same time—follows. The same can be said of same-sex unions. And if a baby happens to be conceived by a couple involved with others, his or her own spouse, or any other combo you might consider, abortion becomes a backup.
When that happens, the rights of the baby—and most importantly his identity as an individual human being—are swept under the carpet to placate the politically correct status quo.
It certainly is not difficult to see where this apathetic mass of humanity is headed. This is why we speak up, remain vigilant, and pray without ceasing.
Father Paul Scalia warned against this kind of apathy, sometimes referred to as “the noonday devil” (Ps 91:6). Obviously, it can affect anyone! Scalia wrote: “We need to reflect deliberately and often on the truths of our faith, the attributes of God, the events of our Lord’s life, etc. And when, not if, we grow tired, we need to look to Our Lord and push through the difficulty. We need to remain with Him and not fear the one who lays waste at noon.”
The curative for the degenerate standards of today is right there at the foot of the cross. Let us take that message of hope with us and go forth.