Good Morals or Bad Morals

I was fortunate to grow up in a Norman-Rockwell-like New England town with one blinking streetlight.  One thing that I observed, knowing most of the people there, was that most of the poor families in town had numerous children, and they mostly went to the Catholic Church.  I had schoolmates that came from poor families, and they went to the Catholic Church every Sunday, right along with the better-to-do families with only 1 or 2 children.  From such observations, I was able to draw a parallel between the likeliness of poverty and the number of children in a family.  I also observed that some Catholics were very likely using birth control. Oh my God!

I know this is a touchy subject, but given the headlines lately, it’s time to come clean about birth control, good Catholics first.  Lately we have seen Congressman Darrell Issa holding hearings on women’s birth control, with no women present, and Rush Limbaugh calling a young woman a slut and prostitute because she had the courage to speak out on the subject.  Now that the cat's out of the bag, I suppose that we can expect Catholic bishops to have all their good followers declare publicly what they do for birth control.  But they probably won’t because from what I understand 85% of Catholics use artificial birth control, against church dictates, making the flag of hypocrisy wave in a stiff wind, if you know what I mean.  Perhaps Darrell Issa, an Eastern Orthodox Catholic with one child, would like to publicly divulge the type of birth control he and his wife used for their 30 years of marriage.  And more disgustingly, Rush Limbaugh can tell us what he does.  I often wonder what kind of people can listen to an adult man call a young woman such names on the radio?  Certainly no good Catholics would listen in!

For those that want to know, they can stand outside the Catholic Church on Sunday and observe the people going in and out, noting how many children they have.  If a family doesn’t have 8 kids it’s likely in my view that they use some type of birth control.  I single out the Catholic Church because the Bishops have threatened to sue the Obama administration for trying to tell the church businesses that they must provide artificial birth control to their employees.  By observing how many kids the families have, we can get a good idea if the Bishops are serious about reigning in their followers, or wanting to play politics in an election year.  I’m guessing the latter.

All these revelations of the devout will certainly rev up the gossip trail, and very likely tell us what the Catholic Bishops must already know, that the number of kids is directly proportional with the incidence of poverty in most cases.  So the next time we hear someone proclaim that women should hold an aspirin between their knees for birth control, let’s ask that person what they are doing?

Another observation I have made in life is that good morals are what “we” are doing, at the moment.  Bad morals are what “we” aren’t doing, at the moment.  Catholics included.