Good evening, Pantheist and/or Protestant America! Pack your old thinking cap and saddle up!
'Fiddlesticks,' I hear consistently in so many (or few) words, 'Why does the Catholic Church have such a big beef with all these silly, optional, peripheral issues?!' Well, my environmentally concerned friends and acquaintances, the Catholic approach to one of these 'silly, optional, peripheral issues' - a teeth-gnashing hot topic, no less - looks like a much less silly option after all:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub
If you don't want to read the whole article linked there, here's the basic idea: Hey, let's sterilise ourselves so as to save the planet (read further in this entry for an explanation on that tangent), and in the meantime, we'll indirectly sterilise small fish so as to eventually wreck the eco-systemme. Fantastic! Here's the ironic and not-so-shocking truth: Catholics and other persons who abstain from artificial 'birth' control have been helping stem a real though ignorant assault on Mother Earth all along (in 100% organic ways, no less). Viva Wisdom, Viva Saving The World, but also Viva Logical Consistency (and this as well will be explained further on in the entry).
This recent study scratches a surface of sorts; I find myself wondering how these chemical deposits in the water table are affecting or will eventually affect all of us humans as well as the fish - even affecting those humans among us who don't mess around with that stuff. This could potentially be one of those 'God, help us all' situations. Every action has consequences, no matter how 'advanced' we think we are in avoiding the consequences. So, we want to manipulate our fertility? Thanks to the marriage of socially-acceptable, Humanistic egotism and recent technological advances, it's now possible to artificially manipulate our own bodies however we see fit; but beyond the known consequences (in our principled lives and obvious physical attributes), in doing this we suddenly discover that we're hurting other creatures and ourselves in the process. Yet I have my doubts about how 'earth conscious' we will truly be when it's all said and done, even upon learning these facts, because for so long we've enjoyed sex being a non-Sacramental act (there's a lot less pesky accountability that way).
Once again, my friends and acquaintances, we see the importance of having a Sacramental and logically consistent world-view. Lately it seems we've been wanting to save God's good, green earth, but we've also been approaching God's gift of sexuality as a Hindu/Jewish person at a Shoney's buffet (scarf down this aspect, religiously avoid that aspect, etc.). And, unsurprisingly, we have further clouded our ability to spot our own hypocrisy: In matters of the environment, self-control is the watch-word and song, with our ever-vigilant awareness of the fatal consequences; in matters of sexuality, however, the idea of birth control based on self-control is regarded as pre-'enlightenment' and idiotic. 'Silly rabbit,' we say, 'sex doesn't have consequences anymore; we took care of that a long time ago. Get off the soap-box and start focusing on the very real consequences of humanity's other actions - such as, say, environmental irresponsibility.'
Hilariously enough, numerous 'green theologians' that I've been dipping into lately have connected the dots between the two issues. These theologians are unhesitant to hastily suggest that earth is about to be overpopulated by humans (let's sort through that fluffy stuff sometime, by the by) and that we need more and more 'responsible' birth control - that is, chemicals and doctored-up condoms instead of self-control - in order to save Mother Earth from our raping and pillaging that is the fruit of our lack of self-control.
No, we are not about to overpopulate the planet, speaking in sheer numbers of humans. But humanity's insatiable and unchecked hunger has already overpopulated the planet. Virtue cannot be isolated into tidy little compartments. All in all, I mean, seriously: how long can we continue stubbornly wandering in circles around the Wilderness before growing tired of it all? This chosen exile must eventually become too burdensome . . . mustn't it?
Let's make a bumpersticker - something catchy. 'Fish don't count. Viva La Pill.' Someone with more time on her/his hands will be able to come up with something good, I'm sure . . .
-Rick
