Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Archives

Commandments

Breaking the Sixth Commandment Leads to Murder

by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

There are some topics that are catchy when you first hear them, but they lose their impact by their very startling presentation.

Whoever heard of the sixth commandment as so binding that if you break it, it leads to murder?

But that is precisely what I am saying.

Our Homicidal Age

We are living in the most homicidal century of recorded human history,

• There have been more deaths due to war casualties since 1900…
  
  
• There have been more people who have died of starvation since 1900… In India alone, the figure is 100,000 per month.
  
  
• There have been more aging people who have been terminated since 1900…
  
  
• There have been more martyrs killed for Christ since 1900… In the Sudan…In Spain…In Russia…Under the Nazis.

But that is not our main focus. Our main focus is the willful homicide of abortion

• In Russia for 70 years…
  
  
• Now in China
  
  
• The “peace treaty” with Japan.

In the United States the most recent study shows that an estimated 9,600,000 to 14,300,000 chemical, mechanical, and surgical abortions take place every year in the U.S. since 1973. This amounts to 193 to 286 million abortions over the last 20 years. Surely ours is the bloodiest century of all human history.

Unchastity to Murder

What is behind these astronomical homicidal figures? The answer is plain.

• It is the casual acceptance of contraception in one once civilized country after another.
  
  
• It is the corresponding denial that contraception is a grave sin of lust. Sexual gratification is sought, and bought, and obtained while excluding both the two divinely ordained purposes of intercourse.
  
  
• Intercourse is permissible only to married people between themselves.
  
  
• Contraception seeks carnal pleasure while deliberately excluding the conception of a child.
  
  
• Contraception likewise seeks sexual pleasure on the pretended fostering of mutual love of husband and wife. Actually it is the fostering of selfish sexual pleasure while using the husband or wife to heighten the sexual satisfaction of each spouse for him or herself alone.

But the situation is more serious still. Not a few bishops of the Catholic Church have become convinced that contraception

• is not a grave sin
  
  
• is not a sin at all
  
  
• is up to the conscience of each married couple to decide on their own whether they should practice contraception or not.

The bishops themselves have been deeply influenced by dissident, nominally Catholic theologians like Charles Curran, that contraception is morally natural.

Priest confessors tell their penitents that contraception is not sinful.

Books in religious instruction for children, monographs for teachers and religious administrators, with few exceptions in the English language, simply abet the evil.

With all of this background, is it any wonder that to even dare raise this suspect of sins against the 6th Commandment leading to murder is unpardonable.

Our Responsibility

The single most important need here is to be absolutely clear. The verdict of recorded history going back to pre-Christian times is that contraception leads to abortion.

The contraceptive mind is a

• Self-seeking mind
  
  
• Self-gratifying mind
  
  
• Self-loving mind
  
  
• Self-adoring mind.

As all the evidence shows, abortion is the result of a selfishness that does not want to sacrifice self for the sake of pregnancy and birth and the loving nurture of a newborn child.

All the pro-abortion propaganda is slanted towards the self-will of the pregnant woman.

• Her choice is what matters
  
  
• Her conscience is important
  
  
• Her desires are the norm of morality
  
  
• Her will is paramount.

Not only the rights of the child, but even the rights of God the Creator are ignored or denied in this worship of what I call the New Paganism whose god is the Self.

All of this we may have heard, and it is worth repeating. But let us not be sidetracked. The issue we are facing is the role of lust as leading to murder.

We have no option. Abortion as willful homicide will be stopped, or even partially brought under control only if the people of a nation begin to practice chastity.

Here is the logic. Unchaste people practice contraception. Contraception leads to abortion. Abortion is murder.

Words could not be plainer. Either we restore chastity or we shall never stop the massive murder of abortion.

Everything that our Catholic faith tells us needed to restore and preserve chastity must be used to bring global homicide under control. I would like to make the following recommendations:

• Favor the priests and confessors you know who accept the teaching of Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical Humanae Vitae.
  
  
• Favor the reading of books, magazines and newspapers which recognize the sinfulness of contraception.
  
  
• Form your friendships among people who believe in the Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception
  
  
• Pray…
  
  
• Sacrifice
  
  
• Teach.

We must be convinced, and I mean convinced, that not to control the sex passions is to let loose the passion to homicide.

The relationship of these two passions, unchaste self-love and selfish homicide, is closer than we ever realized.

During my graduate studies, as a young priest in Rome in the early fifties… Who would have thought that Americans would be responsible for some 200 million murders in 20 years? Yet, America is so

• pornographic
  
  
• sexually intoxicated
  
  
• sexually hypnotized… the inevitable has taken place.

Only Divine Power can restore a once civilized nation to normal sanctity.

Copyright © 1999 Inter Mirifica