By CHRISTOPHER MANION
On Saturday of Holy Week, The New York Times published an op-ed entitled, “In This Time of War, I Propose We Give Up God.” Shalom Alexander, the apparently unhappy author, “grew up in an Haredi Jewish neighborhood in Monsey, N.Y., where he describes himself as having been ‘raised like a veal,’ a reference to his strict religious upbringing,” his bio recounts.
And he’s been mad ever since.
For some reason, the greatest feast of the year for Christian believers brings out the worst in many unbelievers. They can’t just let it go by. Like the chap who was “cast into the outer darkness” from the King’s wedding feast (Matt. 22:13), they seem to bear a certain resentment toward those who are still celebrating inside the hall.
During the Holy Week of 1966, my parents and I were strolling through downtown Madrid when we came upon a newspaper stand with the latest issue of Time Magazine prominently displayed. Dated two days before Easter, the cover read, “Is God Dead?”
“It’s an insult to send that offensive message to this Catholic country,” my father remarked.
Yes, that Time cover was indeed an insult to many Spaniards, who admired America and wondered why the most widely read news magazine in the world would feature such a slur. But the powerful secular currents that were fomenting attacks on the faith in America would soon infect Catholic Spain as well
Under Francisco Franco, that decay had to hide deep below the surface, where it fomented indeed. After Franco’s death in 1975, it didn’t take long. As a result, and quite ironically, today’s Spain is one of the most secular countries in a very secular Europe.
And it didn’t take Time long either, after Henry Luce, Time Magazine’s founder and longtime editor-in-chief, left his post in 1964. The “God is Dead” cover appeared only two years later, and a year later — this time on Palm Sunday — Time struck out again.
Fomenting Fear To Push The Pill
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” — Proverbs 9:10.
“The Pill is a miraculous tablet,” gushed the magazine’s April 7, 1967 cover story. The Pill “may well have as great an impact on the health of billions of people yet unborn….For if The Pill can defuse the population explosion, it will go far toward eliminating hunger, want, and ignorance.”
An outright lie, of course. But why would the most-read news magazine in the world spend 5,000 words telling it?
In 1967, the Population Control crusade had been gathering momentum as The Pill became more widely available.
At the heart of the movement was the desire to rid the world of Ebenezer Scrooge’s “excess population” — Margaret Sanger’s “blacks and browns.”
“The Pill . . . may well have as great an impact on the health of billions of people yet unborn as did the work of Pasteur in revealing the mechanism of infections,” Time raved.
That’s right, “people yet unborn.” They actually said it. But Time was on a roll, too delirious to note the macabre irony.
No, for Time, The Pill was working wonders everywhere! Why, even “illiterate women who can’t count can still take their pills on schedule”! To prove it, “Latin America counts 2,000,000 pill users, a remarkably large number considering its Roman Catholic heritage and low income levels.”
Then comes the clincher: The Pill will cure a worldwide plague! The article relies on the expertise of a certain Dr. Alan Guttmacher, president of Planned Parenthood-World Population. Guttmacher was adamant: Abortion was “the most severe pandemic disease in the world today.”
What? You read that right. Even though he insisted abortion was “safe,” Guttmacher saw it 55 years ago as an evil that only The Pill could cure.
These days we know how easily fear can arise in times of pandemics. So did Dr. Guttmacher and Time Magazine. They wanted us to know that The Pill would cure our fears as well as our “excess population” problem.
That’s why Time’s cover story was entitled, “Contraception: Freedom from Fear.”
Fear And Humanae Vitae: Who Should Be Afraid?
“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear” (1 John 4:18).
“Words, words, words,” cried Liza Doolittle. But what was Time’s real target? Look no further than the issue’s cover: It featured a mockery of the rosary made out of birth control pills.
Why the focus on the Catholic angle? Well, Latin America was over 90 percent Catholic 50 years ago, and the region was a prime target of Population Controllers. Wouldn’t the Church throw in the towel if millions of Catholics were using it already?
The Controllers had many Catholic supporters. Notre Dame University’s president, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, CSC, joined prominent theologians and lay leaders to support a change in Church teaching.
To put it bluntly, for Time, Catholic teaching was the last barrier to the universal acceptance of the “morality” of contraception. It had to go.
God is Dead, but fear not: The Pill is a miracle!
It’s interesting to note that, 65 years ago, the pro-abortion Left recognized that it had to contend with the Catholic Church if it wanted to achieve a total victory. Today it doesn’t have to worry about that at all.
No, these days, while the sexual revolution rages, our bishops are silent on Humanae Vitae. Who wants to be ridiculed for defending a lost cause? Who wants to see people walk out of Mass during a pro-life sermon?
That was the fear that Time and the secular elites broadcast for years. And it worked.
And Guttmacher? Sure, he lied. For him abortion wasn’t a pandemic, it was a goal. But he was speaking to a generation that still recognized abortion as the capital crime it is.
And Time lied too. Have “hunger, want and ignorance” disappeared from the face of the Earth since 1967? No. But hundreds of millions of unborn children have.
Yes, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical reaffirmed Church teaching a year later, but it died a silent death.
Its truths, however, abide, and history will recognize it as one of the most prophetic documents of our age.
What is to be done?
The laity must pick up the fallen standard and persevere, embracing the same spirit that inspires Robert Cardinal Sarah:
“Have the courage to raise your children in the light of Christ. You will sometimes have to fight against the prevailing wind and endure the mockery and contempt of the world. But we are not here to please the world!”
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress