Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Interview with Charles Coulombe

Here is an excellent interview with author Charles Coulombe about the Pope Emeritus and the conclave.
The Church is stagnant in Western Europe and North America (areas which, demographically-speaking, are dying out in general) and these dying zones are precisely the areas from which come the cries for “women’s reproductive rights” and the “groups of nuns.” (The latter, incidentally, are inevitably members of similarly dying orders—the only orders of nuns that seem to attract recruits these days are those who hew a more orthodox line.) For an institution which must think in terms of centuries—and even if questions of “immutable” dogma were not involved—it would make little sense to tie one’s future to the views of a declining, one might almost say failed, portion of the Church.

From that perspective, it is not a question of being “forward thinking” or holding on to “old fashioned values,” but of surviving into the future (to say nothing of remaining true to oneself). Certainly the Cardinals (and anyone else knowledgeable about modern dating norms in Europe and America!) who have read Paul VI’s encyclical “Humanae Vitae” will see that his predictions in 1968 about the probable future if artificial contraception became generally accepted, shall find Church teaching on this point prophetic rather than retrograde—even if it makes uncomfortable reading. (Read entire interview.)
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