British horrors

An article by Hilary White yesterday on Lifesite looks at an interview given by Cherie Blair on Good Morning television in which the wife of the former Prime Minister was questioned by viewers about her recently published book. (See: No Comment from Bishops as Cherie, wife of Former PM Blair, Touts Catholicism While Extolling Contraception)

Cherie Blair confirmed her rejection of the teaching of the Catholic Church on the wrongfulness of any use of artificial contraception:

"People seem to be quite shocked that perhaps a Catholic girl even uses contraception but it is really an important thing for women because one of the things about the book is about how women's lives have changed,"

Thomas Peters has also commented on this story on his blog American Papist (see: American Papist)

Meanwhile in other news about Britain, Bishop Elio Sgreccia has, quite rightly, commented on the "horror" approved by our Parliament, namely the creation of hybrid embryos. The Zenit article Bishop: British Parliament Approves "Horror" gives due space also to the opposition of non-Catholic Christians and Muslims to the HFE bill.

The connection between these two stories is that once you artificially and deliberately break the link between the marriage act and procreation, the way is open for the manipulation of human life without any objective moral considerations. In Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI foresaw only some of the consequences of artificial methods of birth control. Had you said in 1968 that 40 years on, we would be creating embryos for research and allowing human-animal hybrid embryos, you would have been dismissed as a hysterical scaremonger.

Someone also needs to explain to Cherie Blair that those who counsel women in crisis pregnancies know only too well that the idea that contraception gives women "control over their fertility" is proved wrong by the large proportion of women presenting for abortion who are using one or more forms of contraception.