Christianity – The Twisted Attitudes towards birth

 

TABOOS ABOUT CHILD-BIRTH

ADOPTION

TABOOS ABOUT CHILD-BIRTH

 

The Bible says that God cursed Eve, the first woman, with the punishment that she would bring forth children in pain.  Woman was punished in her for she passed this punishment on to all women by the power of God.  What was said to her was said by God to all women.  This evidently means that having babies today under anaesthetic to avoid pain is sinful.  The Church avoids saying that which shows how little faith it has in its Bible.  But it felt free to forbid attempts to avoid pain in the past.  Queen Victoria roused the wrath of the Church when she had a child under anaesthetic.  The Bible also implies that having a baby by Caesarean Section is immoral.  When the Bible is so strict about nature this unnatural method of birth must be sinful. 

 

The Law of Moses says that a woman is made unclean by having a baby and it is dirtier to have a girl than a boy.  Such women could not go near the Temple for a time.  The Catholic Church up until recently used to practice churching which was a purification ceremony that a woman had to undergo before she would be permitted to attend Mass again after giving birth.  In the past if a woman died unchurched she could be denied burial in the Church cemetery (page 25-27, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven).

 

The Church calls babies born outside of a valid marriage bastards and illegitimate.  Canon law used to ban them from the priesthood.  The Law of Moses dislikes illegitimate children especially for the God who allegedly wrote it banned them from the priesthood and even their own legitimate children as well from participation in the sacred rites at the heart of their religion.  The Christian priesthood is reportedly more sacred than that priesthood therefore it has more reason to only allow children born in marriage into it.  If Jesus was born outside of marriage that would mean that he could not be the Son of God for the Law banned children born that way from the priesthood which would mean somebody like that would have no right to claim to be the Messiah which was higher than the priesthood.  Nobody could prove that Jesus really was conceived by the Holy Spirit and we only have the word of unreliable men that he was.  And the fact that they were not very worried about proving their claim warns us as to their dishonesty.  That is enough to forbid us to accept Jesus as the Messiah.  Jesus is presented by the Church as legitimate for he was born of Mary and the Holy Spirit even though he was conceived without Mary’s husband.  This is extremely insulting to those who are regarded as illegitimate.  Illegitimate implies criticism of the mother for conceiving outside of wedlock – if you condemn pre-marital sex or extra-marital sex you have to consider the child illegitimate.  But if the mother did not get pregnant then but say a month later when she got married she would be having a different baby not the same one.  So this tells the child she had outside of marriage that he or she should not have been born. 

 

Many people born out of wedlock say they find this wholly wicked and say that no so-called illegitimate person should lower themselves to support the Church.  The Church replies that it only says the child should not have been conceived but should be born is contradictory and just an excuse.  The other excuse is that the Church is not condemning the conception but the circumstances is also unbelievable for without the circumstances there would have been no conception and had things been different another child would have been born and not John or Jane.  So every time a priest looks at you if you have been conceived outside of marriage he is thinking you should not exist.  This is another reason why marriage is so wrong and horrendous for it legitimises this attitude.  Marriage implies that sex should be regulated and limited to one man and his wife otherwise just making a legal agreement to share property would be all that is needed.  Remember this, if the Church could go back in time and prevent the conception it would.  It would destroy your existence by preventing it.

 

What if a woman gets pregnant and has a baby as a result of rape?  Can we say then that the child should not exist?  We are saying the woman should not have been raped and it seems if we can say that, that we can say that if she gave consent she should not have got pregnant as a result of consensual sex.  It would seem we are saying the baby should not have been born.   Rape is an act of violence rather than sex.  It is violence that takes that form.  We are saying the baby should be born for there is nothing wrong with having a baby as a result of rape or pre-marital sex.  It is the force in rape that is wrong not the sex.

 

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ADOPTION

 

The Catholic Church allows adoption.  It is forbidden when it is done for unloving reasons.  That is odd for you are still obligated by the Christian understanding of God to help people even if you have a bad reason.  If the unmarried mother or deserted-wife mother has plenty of relations to help and the men are willing to be there for the child to replace the father in as many ways as possible then the Church allows her to keep the baby if she wants to.  Think about this.  The baby will have a father and mother if it is given up.  So, is it better or worse for her to give the child up?  Or is it as good to give it up as to keep it?

 

It must be better for her to give the baby away for some married couple if marriage is intended by God to ensure that children have a mother and father.  It presupposes that relatives helping an unmarried mother is not the same.  We see how God’s teaching is ignored by the Church when there would be too much of an uproar if the Church supported it.

 

Yet the teaching that we must love God with all our hearts and our neighbour as ourselves meaning we cannot love our neighbour if we hide God’s teaching from her or him implies that God’s doctrine should never be hidden for his will comes before everything. 

 

If what is moral is doing what is best and marriage is the only lawful arrangement for having kids, then it is a sin for an unmarried woman to keep her baby unless she is engaged to the father.  The Church used to rip babies from their mothers’ arms by force and put them up for adoption which was not surprising with its rigid view of marriage relationships.  When Jesus was so strict about marriage that he only allowed separation or divorce without remarriage if adultery had taken place it implies that he does not want children raised except by the father and his wife the mother.  Only if something tragic happened to the parents might there be an exception.  Beating the children up is not grounds for separation in the Jesus system.  Just face it, he didn’t care.  Deep down the Church must agree with Jesus and hold that it is a single mother’s duty to give up her child.  That it does not shout this louder makes its treatment of homosexuals and contracepting heterosexuals all the more vicious.  

 

Humanists believe that the love between a man and a woman or between a man and a man or a woman and a woman plus their being good people and being in a stable relationship and showing a knack for caring for children is enough to allow them to adopt children.  It is better to be chosen by a good gay couple as their child by adoption than to be haphazardly thrown into the arms of a married father and mother who may not want you and who may be alcoholics.  The Church commands that society must make sure that straight couples who want to adopt will be thoroughly checked out.  It concludes that it is very wrong to say that children are better off with nice gay couples than bad straight ones.  The Church is consciously missing the point.  The point is children are better off with a good caring gay couple than a straight married couple who are decent but not as nice as the gays.  To say that gays cannot adopt is simply saying they are not as trustworthy as anybody else.  Some in the Church might go as far as to say that they are not saying that but that it is not the right natural environment.  But that amounts to saying just that gays are not trustworthy and are intrinsically harmful to children which is far worse than saying they harm deliberately.  It is akin to racism. 

 

Even if research and statistics proved that it was bad for children to be adopted by gay couples the fact remains that even if it were good for the children or if some couples were great parents, the Church would still disapprove.  It is religious law it cares about not the children.

 

It is nice to have your parents checked out for you but wonderful Mother Nature is completely indifferent to the welfare of children when anybody can be a father or mother the natural way.  

 

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WORKS CONSULTED

 

A Catechism of Christian Doctrine, Catholic Truth Society, Westminster, 1985

Believing in God, PJ McGrath, Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 1995

Biblical Dictionary and Concordance of the New American Bible, Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington DC, 1971

Divorce, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, 1946

Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, Uta Ranke Heinmann, Penguin, London, 1991

Moral Questions, Bishops Conference, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1971

New Catholic Encyclopedia, The Catholic University of America and the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., Washington, District of Columbia, 1967

Preparing for a Mixed Marriage, Irish Episcopal Conference, Veritas, Dublin, 1984

Rome has Spoken, A Guide to Forgotten Papal Statements and How They Have Changed Through the Centuries, Maureen Fiedler and Linda Rabben (Editors), Crossroad Publishing, New York, 1998

Shattered Vows, Exodus From the Priesthood, David Rice, Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1990

Sex & Marriage A Catholic Perspective, John M Hamrogue C SS R, Liguori, Illinois, 1987

The Emancipation of a Freethinker, Herbert Ellsworth Cory, The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, 1947

 

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