While everyone was asleep, his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat. (Mt. 13:25)
Things like that really happened in Christ’s time. People poisoned wells and sabotaged fields. They sowed weeds in their enemy’s wheat.
Ancient Rome’s Decline
What else did people do at the time of Christ? They contracepted, they aborted babies, they divorced, engaged in unnatural sexual activity, practiced infanticide, and trafficked children. The Church Father Tertullian, who died in 220 A.D., gave a detailed description of surgical tools used in abortions.
This way of life decimated the population in Rome, and caused a very concerned Caesar Augustus (already twice-divorced) to pass a law in 18 B.C. making adultery a crime. In 9 A.D., Caesar made a law which promoted and rewarded marriage and children, at the same time blaming low birth rates on abortion, homosexual activity, and on men who preferred a licentious single life to the responsibilities of marriage.
Listen to Caesar Augustus in the Roman Forum:
O, what shall I call you? Men? But you are not performing any of the offices of men. Citizens? But for all that you are doing, the city is perishing. Romans? But you are undertaking to blot out this name altogether…you are bent on annihilating our entire race and…upon destroying and bringing to an end the entire Roman nation…you are committing murder in not begetting in the first place those who ought to be your descendants…Moreover, you are destroying the State by disobeying its laws and you are betraying your country by rendering her barren and childless…For it is human beings that constitute a city…not houses or porticos or market-places empty of [people].
(Cassius Dio, Roman History, 56.1.5)
They misguidedly blame Christianity for the collapse of the Roman Empire. Caesar Augustus, who died in 14 A.D. before ever hearing the word “Christian,” would have disagreed. He saw his empire collapsing due to men who failed to take up responsibility, a result of confused and unnatural sexual activity which caused marriage and children to be seen as roadblocks to happiness and fulfillment.
Christ made marriage between a man and a woman a sacrament, a sacred bond. He did so in part so that people would care for and protect what the pagans found to be inconvenient roadblocks, the small, weak, least of our brethren. Do you see why Christ was hung on a cross? Do you see why the early Church was full of martyrs? Christianity was (and is) a threat to the false happiness and fulfillment the world sells.
Preaching Modern Contraception
Margaret Sanger, the founder of what became known as Planned Parenthood, spoke a lot about threats to happiness and fulfillment. In 1923, in a journal called The Thinker, Sanger wrote:
Birth Control does not mean contraception indiscriminately practiced. It means the release and cultivation of the better elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extinction, of defective stocks—those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.
In 1915, Margaet Sanger’s husband, William Sanger, like his wife, a member of the socialist party and an anarchist, was arrested for spreading his wife’s contraception propaganda. He blamed his arrest on “sexophobia.” The judge in his trial told him:
Your crime is not only a violation of the laws of man, but of the law of God as well in your scheme to prevent motherhood…If some persons would go around and urge Christian women to bear children, instead of wasting their time on woman suffrage, this city and society would be better off.
Too many people today, lulled to sleep by our enemy, hear that judge’s words and automatically charge him with “sexophobia.” Meanwhile, we have a present-day judge on the U.S. Supreme Court who cannot answer what a “woman” is because, as she put it, “I am not a biologist.” This is how far we have sunk, living in a culture that violates the laws of both man and God.
Saturday, July 25th, is the 58th anniversary of Humanae Vitae (“On Human Life”), a letter published in 1968 in Rome by Pope Paul VI. The letter became controversial, though in substance it was much like what Augustus Caesar said in Rome in 9 A.D., when Christ would have been a small child. It was controversial because it was a threat to people’s “happiness and fulfillment.”
Controversial or not, it really isn’t that complicated. The statistics don’t lie. The unleashing of widespread contraception did not enhance or save marriage. It destroyed it. Promiscuity and adultery skyrocketed with widespread contraception. Human nature being what it is, how could it not have skyrocketed? Do you understand then why the Church always held contraception to be intrinsically evil and gravely sinful?
Divorce skyrocketed with contraception, too. Broken families skyrocketed. Pornography and deviant sexual behavior became mainstream. Now, ask yourselves: Are people happier and more fulfilled now than before? What do you think? If you were out to abolish marriage and the family (see The Communist Manifesto) what would be a better strategy than duping Christian societies into contracepting?
Do you see my point? I’m not a prude. I’m not a buzzkill for those seeking authentic pleasure. Christians are not Puritans or haters of the human race. No, what I want you to understand is this: An enemy has done this. Haters of the Cross of Christ, out to annihilate Christianity and Christian culture, did this to us.
I wonder what William Sanger ended up thinking. He and his wife Margaret divorced in 1921. She had all but abandoned him and their small children to travel the world selling contraception and practicing the “free love” contraception provided her. Perhaps her husband later regretted cheerleading for her unnatural, free-wheeling lifestyle. Maybe he would have found more happiness if she had stayed home and grown flowers in the backyard with him and the children, as opposed to her running off to exterminate the world’s “weeds,” those defective stocks which somehow threatened her happiness and fulfillment.
Recognize the Poisonous Weeds
Farmers are aware of a weed known as darnel, also known as false wheat. It looks very much like wheat until the ear appears. At harvest time, whereas wheat turns golden brown, darnel turns black. Darnel can be poisonous and can kill people.
Understand the parable, my friends. During our short time on earth, there will be weeds in our wheat. God allows the weeds for His own wise purposes. He uses the injustice of the wicked as a way to perfect His people. But understand: The weed does not destroy the wheat. It just makes the wheat fight for its life (Kevin O’Sullivan, Sunday Readings).
The enemy has convinced our below-fertility-rate society that the weeds are people who need exterminated, the “defective stock” who Caesar stated in 9 A.D. were murdered for not having the chance to be born, people who were murdered so that the “finest flowers could bloom” at the murdered people’s expense.
Those of us, who by the grace of God can still think rationally, who know what a man and a woman are, understand that the weeds in the wheat are not “defective stocks” of human beings. In our modern-day disaster, the weed sowed by the enemy was contraception. This was the false wheat. On the surface, it appeared exciting and liberating, but at harvest time it turned black and poisonous.
My friends, keep fighting for your life, and keep fighting for your soul. The enemy wants them both. Take comfort while you are fighting, knowing that the Roman Catholic Church doesn’t just have opinions and feelings; she has the truth, given to her by Truth Himself.
If you are contracepting, quit. If you’ve contracepted in the past, and have let that go unrepented, then go to confession and have your blackened soul set free. Wisdom states, “and you gave your children good ground for hope that you would permit repentance for their sins” (Wis. 12:19).
Repent, my friends. God permits it. Then you will live and die in hope. And at the end of all things, when you meet up with the Sower of the seed, He will say: O, what shall I call you? Men? Indeed. For you performed the offices of men. Citizens? Yes. For it is human beings that constitute a city. Come with me then, and be citizens of heaven.
Photo by Stephen Radford on Unsplash
