Apart from my own travel, living in an international crossroads such as NYC affords me daily interaction with people from every corner of the globe, including the hundreds of people from India with whom I have had many conversations. These would include Mother Theresa’s sisters who have a convent here.

Your modern Jesuit education is quite evident in your commentary. You accuse anyone with whom you disagree of absurdity, without knowing anything of the people with whom you are discoursing. There are a great many Catholics from India who have broader horizons, larger hearts, and greater intellectual depth; people who can envision other solutions than your Jesuitic nihilism.

“This Church will bury Western Civilization’s carcass by the end of this century. The future of the Church for the next few centuries resides in Africa, South America, and Asia; which is why the leftists are furiously promoting birth control in the Southern Hemisphere and Asia.”

As a Catholic living in India, I find your words to be absurd. Dr. Nadal, have you ever been to India? Africa? or may be Mexico? I think such a comment is not helpful if you have not been to a 3rd world country. I makes me question your credentials.
Its easy for you to write such stuff living in your own comfort zone in New York city. Living inside your own little bubble. Unaffected by the misery and poverty people in 3rd world countries have to endure.
Countries like India face a lot more problems than you can imagine Gerry. Billions of people live on less than 2 dollars a day. Millions of children are malnourished. The infant mortality rate as well as the maternal mortality rates are very high. In such a horrid situation contraception is indeed a blessing. I would say that abortion in the early stages of pregnancy is something I don’t consider morally wrong at all.
You probably think I am a “dissident catholic”. But if you truly want to understand what I mean please come and live for a month in India. The poverty will shock you. WE NEED BIRTH CONTROL. Family planning services will empower women and also help families save more in the long run, thus enabling them to come out of poverty. Let me clarify, I am NOT a zero population growth advocate. I believe that family planning is useful and can help us overcome the socioeconomic disparity that is so evident in 3rd world countries. I support Obama and the “leftists”. They are the only Americans who understand our problems.

By the way, my Jesuit education has helped me attain a more realistic understanding of the world I live in. Please do check out Liberation Theology. If applied correctly it will help us a lot.

http://www.socinian.org/liberty.html

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I’d like address your comments. First, recent polls indicate that Obama’s support amongst Catholics has slipped since his HHS mandate. A new Pew Research Center poll puts Obama’s support among Catholics at 47% to Romney’s 52%. That’s a big come down from four years ago. Get the rest here.

As for the Church keeping pace with societal changes, we’ve heard that criticism in our 2,000 year history. Of course, we’ve buried several civilizations and countless nations along the way. We’re still here. They’re not. The reason why we are still here is because the Church speaks to the reality of our immutable universal human nature. That’s why civilizations have come and gone but the Church endures.

As for an educated laity, I’m one of them. This blog, as of this post, contains 690 posts, many of them linking to the Centers for Disease Control’s own data which substantiates what those quaint papal teachings have had to say about the effects of contraception on the human person, as well as putting the lie to leftist spin on contraceptive safety and efficacy.

This Church will bury Western Civilization’s carcass by the end of this century. The future of the Church for the next few centuries resides in Africa, South America, and Asia; which is why the leftists are furiously promoting birth control in the Southern Hemisphere and Asia. Demographic suicide isn’t enlightened, Stephen. None of the Enlightenment Fathers ever held that out as such. It’s simply suicide, which by its nature is anti-enlightenment, grubby, desperate, and cruel.

Bold statements that there is an uprising against our President from the Church mean little when that uprising is limited to the clergy. The laity in general is more concerned with direct effect to their lives than enforcing a conscripted, outdated ideology that simply propagates a fading religion. The majority of voters in the United States elected Barack Obama in 2008 by a large margin. Those who have embraced the President and his forward, progressive ideals to meet the challenges of the future of our country will continue to do so, especially since the GOP has nothing to offer but a generalized conservative tantrum. The young, first time voters, along with discerning independent minded voters are unlikely to abandon our incumbent President by empty rhetoric, straw man arguments, and false equivalencies.