Imagine...

Change.
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I couldn't get to sleep last night. Why? I haven't been feeling well and so I slept yesterday afternoon for too long - and then I remained wide awake after I went to bed.

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I was thinking about too many things, some of which I will share here. I was asking myself rhetorical questions, such as; "What if Obama suddenly reversed himself on abortion and became pro-life - would he be a good president then?" (IMO: NO!)

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But if Obama rejected abortion, choice, embryonic stem-cell research, and proclaimed himself pro-life, would pro-life Catholics and others who cannot say one good thing about him, accept and respect his presidency? Would he be a good guy then?

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If the United States reversed Roe v. Wade and made abortion illegal, would we be a moral nation then? Would everything be okay? Would be all-American-apple-pie-high-kicks-and-twirls-born -on-the-4th-of-July again?

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Essentially I am asking, "Is abortion the only thing wrong in our country?"

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And no - I'm not going there as regards the ever present issues of poverty and education, war and peace, or beauty pageants and same sex marriage stuff.

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But would everything be copacetic just because abortion went away?

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I don't think so hon.
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What about contraception? Younger people may not know this, but even my parents and grandparents thought the pill was the greatest thing since sliced bread. The pill was freedom. Moms wanted their daughters to use it. (My mom wanted my sister (who was married) to use it because she had a bad heart, but my CINO sister refused and had 7 kids.)

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Another thing younger people may not know is that in the olden days, unwed motherhood was shameful - indeed, a teen who got herself pregnant - and that is what was thought - got herself - was considered to have been punished with a kid. No one was happy about it. If the parents had means, the girl was sent away to have the baby and then placed it for adoption. If the parents were working class, maybe the girl was sent to places such as the Home of the Good Shepherd Sisters. If they were really poor, she dropped out of school and most likely put the kid up for adoption; or as was often the case with minorties, they kept it - end of story. Unless of course there happened to be an old strega in the neighborhood who knew how to get rid of it - abortion was around - it just wasn't legal, much less admitted.

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I'm not going to drag this out, but I'm convinced that the intrinsic evil, the root sin here, is the contraceptive mentality - it was around long before Roe v. Wade. The moral crisis, the loss of faith, started long before that as well. And do not forget, at one time divorce was illegal as well.

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Anyway. The same quiz works for the Church. Ask yourself something like this:

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If Vatican II never happened, would the Church be just fine?

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The answers are similar. Many problems, obviously, were present before the Council - in fact, one reason the Council was called is that something exactly like it was needed. True, some things were not handled well afterwards, but neither were they always handled well before.

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Then I fell asleep.