Of course it is sinful Sandra. Even people without any religious backround seem to agree it’s “verboten” until you are minimally able to accept the consequences. Let alone those whith moral and religious upbringing who still decide that they somehow, will be consequence free of their actions.

Yes, there are instances such as rape where there is no choosing to sin of course.
Just like there are instances of planning to have a healthy baby, and you end up with one like my sister in law has. The lowest functioning down syndrome child born on the planet.

What is your point?
She did not plan that outcome.

Sin is when you actually have 3 things you ignore. (mortal) and we all can conclude that we know where babies come from by now no?

So what is going on here with all this talk?

I am promoting adults to actually know and PRACTICE their faith, (which you seem to think matters not) when I think it would not 100 percent solve the problem (due to free will and our fallen state) but, I don’t think we can shrug it off as “not working” since we can see hardly ANYONE is practicing their faith and properly educating their children.!

However, this is where I have a beef with the Church, unlike you. My beef is how their program sucks.
They make little or no effort to insure and equip parents after the big day. Pre-cana is good to get them there (I hope?) but afterwards… Or if one is not catholic, or both are not formed…..

!!!!!

No one cares about that fiasco. No one in the church.

I’m sure you’re right. It fits the dysfunctional wing of the ARN family to a T–even as a kid wondering what on earth was wrong with these people. Closest I could figure was the dislocation they surely felt leaving the beloved ancestral homeland of Brooklyn NY and settling in the overly bright and roomy suburbs of DC, well out of the… ahem..”stabilizing ” orbit of the rest of the family.

For example, the only one of the kids that didn’t get pregnant or make someone else pregnant, ran for his life out of the Pentagon where he worked on 9/11, and has rarely been sober since. Yeah…family dynamics.

Well, back then (’50′s-60′s) this nasty and miserable attitude, devoid of a speck of compassion I might add, was *society-wide* and accepted as THE social control method of choice to keep girls from fooling around. The prospect of such unspeakable humiliation kept many a girl in line. Oh yes, the opportunity to humiliate must have been fun for her moral “betters” as well. Illegal abortion, “staying with relatives (but everyone knew)”,social death or the shotgun route were the only choices. Nobody. thought. of . the. baby.

And so those pushing for a change to loosen up abortion laws were not thinking of the baby either, just a “compassionate” way out for someone whose life may have otherwise been ruined. An end run around one of the crueler methods of social control of the time.

There were a couple out of wedlock pregnancies in my own extended family which were not as well handled as the ones in yours probably. Thank God things are easier now.

“And it is a fact that tighter abortion laws= fewer abortions.”

Most likely the women who are ambivalent about getting one. Those will be deterred by those extra hoops to jump through-waiting period ,notification of parents- which after all are perfectly reasonable things to impose considering how serous it is. The others who are sure? Well, stay out of the way or you’ll be run over. Nothing will stop them.

THere will always be unkind and cruel people, no matter what the legislation– either people who kick their kids out of the house for getting pregnant, or people who kick their kids out of the house for *not* getting an abortion. It’s our fallen human nature, and no legislation will change the fact that there are nasty, miserable individuals who need a change of heart. However, whatever legislation there is should always respect the dignity of the human person– why should we settle for any less? And it is a fact that tighter abortion laws= fewer abortions.

The experience in days gone by of unmarried, pregnant young women was, I am convinced, determined more by their own family dynamics. In my own very large and Catholic extended family, there have been numerous out-of-wedlock pregnancies through the generations to this day that simply resulted in the family hanging together and the child being welcomed.

Helen I just read the link you gave… interesting!!
Unlike Augustinus,St. Francis and others mentioned,I normally look for ‘key words’ in the Scripture,when I have a queerie,it has in most cases worked for me.
The Bible,one of (if not the) greatest ‘Books of Knowledge’.. When we pray for help we get help,only we do not allways immediately recognise it as such,ie. when we ask for help with family issues, we are often given the ‘oppertunity’ to work at the problem,situations arrise which call for us to engage more in on-going, every day issues,which we may have neglected… This can be THE answer to a prayer… the solution to problems are not handed to us on a platter,we must work at solving them,we just get a ‘kick in the backside’,so to speak.It is then of course,a matter of “interpretation” in how we view this “help” or indeed
if we acknowledge it at all..
Much has been “Lost in translation” (or interpretation)!!! ei. The “Onan” vers has been ‘missused’ by opponants to family planing for centuries,the same applies to St. Paul’s vers on ‘the celebate state’.. he himself writes,- “on this I have no command from God,but it is my wish that every one be as I”…. “there are some who can not fathom this,it is better then,for them to ‘marry’”.. The Bible also states that “A Bishop should be the husband of one wife….” How do we interpritate those verses??
In the early(first)Christian communities Bishops and priests were married,(or had common law wives).. only Centuries later did the Church Fathers denounce this.. They were called upon to “leave their wives,and in future to abstain from taking a wife (concubine)”

“intrpretation” how do we handle this?? it’s “Optional”!!
‘Catherine of Alexandria’ today Nov.25th.is her ‘Feast day’
“Because of the fabulous character of her hagiography (the account of her martyrdom) and because of uncertainty about who she was, the Roman Catholic Church in 1969 removed her feast day from the Roman Catholic calendar of saints to be commemorated universally, wherever the Roman Rite is celebrated. But she continued to be recognized as a saint of the Catholic Church, with a feast on 25 November. In 2002, her feast was restored to the Roman Catholic calendar of saints as an optional memorial, which may be celebrated throughout the Latin Church”.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03445a.htm

Okay., for my fellow bible readers here… thoughts? I have some pro and contra on this one.
How does it tie in to the topic? Well, I think it certainly does. I’ts all about interpretation.