God has left us from Paradise three things: the stars, the flowers and the eyes of a child…
That is a quote from a 1908 book titled The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by Nicholas Guir. The author wrote that flowers have a place entirely their own in God’s creation:
In the splendor of their colors, in their fragrance, they are revelations of the beauty and goodness of God, emblems of His benevolence, images of His first, true designs.
So, God left us three things from Paradise. G.K. Chesterton wrote that Christ promised three things to His disciples—that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble. Chesterton, who died in 1936, knew how to deliver the truth with humor; he was good humored and kind, even when dealing with opposition. He only held contempt for one class of people: those who pushed birth control, which he observed “does not control any birth. It only makes sure there is no birth to control.”
A few weeks ago, I mentioned 2016’s Wikileaks, which featured hacked government emails. In one email from 2012, a political agent suggested to a former White House Chief of Staff that “the seeds of revolution” could be planted in the Catholic Church by “mandating contraception coverage.”
Did you know U.S. Federal and State governments have been suing the Little Sisters of the Poor for the past fifteen years? They’ve been suing the Sisters for their refusal to submit to mandated contraception coverage. Isn’t that interesting? How did it come to this? How could that happen in a Christian civilization?
On July 25, 1968, Pope Paul VI released the Encyclical Letter, Humanae Vitae (“On Human Life”). Paragraph 17 of the letter warned of the consequences of artificial birth control. It warned of the “dangerous weapon” birth control would become in the hands of the government. It warned that something as private as conjugal intimacy would end up “at the mercy of the public authorities.”
In 1957, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a guest on a TV show called The Mike Wallace Interview. The show, filmed in black and white, begins with the host Mike Wallace holding up a cigarette, which would be in his hand throughout the whole show. Wallace smiles into the camera and tells Americans why they should buy Phillip Morris cigarettes. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the power of advertising and the hypnotic medium of television.
Wallace states Phillip Morris’ cigarettes are made of mild, lighter leaf tobacco. He continues: “And that accounts for the genuine mildness I get in every puff. What I call a man’s kind of mildness. There’s no filter, no foolin, no artificial mildness because there is nothing between you and the tobacco itself.” Wallace ends the commercial by telling his viewers, “it will probably be the best natural smoke you ever had.”
With that said, right on cue, the spotlight on the darkened stage lights up on Margaret Sanger. And what do Sanger and Wallace start talking about, directly after the commercial for natural cigarettes? They start talking about artificial birth control. Ha! After the spot for filter-less cigarettes, the two begin talking about filtering the natural marital act with artificial barriers that come between husband and wife. Chesterton would have had a field day with that.
The interview begins with Wallace and Sanger both agreeing that her main opponent is the Roman Catholic Church. Yes, her enemy is not Congress, or the Jews, Muslims, or Methodists. Sanger’s enemy is the Roman Catholic Church.
The host, Wallace, states that the Church defends the natural law, meaning she defends the way things were designed by God to work and function. Therefore, birth control, according to the Church, is wrong not just for Catholics but for all human beings.
Sanger responds by attacking the Church, stating it is the Catholic Church that is not natural and not normal. The 77-year-old Sanger, sneering and unable to hide her contempt, asks how the hierarchy of the Church can know about these things. She tells Wallace, “They’re celibates. They don’t know love. They don’t know about marriage and bringing up children. They speak to people as if they were God.” Wallace then asks Sanger, “Do you believe in God?” She pauses and gives a garbled response about believing in the spark of divinity that is inside people of all religions.
You can watch this interview on your computer. Warning: you might be tempted to purchase some filter-less cigarettes after watching and listening to the super-salesman Mike Wallace. That’s the power of television. I doubt you’d be tempted to buy birth control, however, after watching and listening to Margaret Sanger. The pioneer of birth control appeared quite miserable.
In 1951, Sanger tapped a scientist, known among his peers as “Dr. Frankenstein,” to invent an oral contraceptive pill for women. The pill was tested on women in a mental institution in the northeast. After the outcry, testing shifted to Puerto Rico, where the poorest of the poor were used as Guinea pigs, receiving dangerous dosages of hormones. In 1961, the FDA, for the first time in its history, approved a drug that did not fight disease, but was for otherwise healthy women. With the approval, Dr. Frankenstein and his associates became rich. The poor, experimented-on women in Puerto Rico were never compensated for their injuries.
My friends, look around at the culture of death, brought to us by the Trojan Horse which was contraception. An enemy has done this to us—an enemy out to destroy Western Civilization, Christian civilization.
And so, here we are today, living at the mercy of the public authorities. Here we are living in a sterile, devastated vineyard, where people, and not God, are supposedly in charge of human life. These people of course no longer believe in the God above, but in the supposed spark of divinity within. The same spark Adam and Eve believed in when they plucked the apple.
To pluck the apple or not. To eat the forbidden fruit or not. That’s the question during our short adventure here on earth, is it not? To be weeds or wheat? The aquatic version of this is in last Sunday’s Gospel passage where the good fish get thrown in the bucket, and the bad fish thrown in the garbage.
Margaret Sanger accused us of not being natural and normal. Then she made it her mission to fill women’s bodies with artificial hormones and chemicals. How’s that for irony? I don’t know, perhaps Sanger was right. Perhaps Catholics are not called to be so natural and normal after all, for the natural and normal thing in a fallen world is to pluck the apple and run with the devil. The supernatural thing is to resist the devil and run with Christ.
Look at the beautiful flowers on our altars and stenciled on the church walls. Understand that the flowers are not for us and our own good pleasure. No! They are for the new Adam who is Jesus Christ—a celibate who knows about love. A celibate who knows about marriage and children. A celibate who holds nothing back for His bride, the Church. The flowers remind us of the Garden of Eden and paradise. The flowers, like the stars in the sky, are revelations of the beauty and goodness of God, emblems of His benevolence, images of His first, true designs.
And so, with no artificial barriers at the altar rail, not daring to contracept with our Lord, we can eat supernatural food and obtain a spark of divinity. Then, going forward for the rest of our lives we will be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble with a world headed for hell. Yes, we will do that. And at the end of all things, God-willing, we will get thrown in the bucket with the good fish.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
