PowerBlog has this collection of ultimata from the previous Pope regarding an “objectively so profoundly unlawful” crime that, well, you just better not, that’s all. It is, of course, the unlawful, the unspeakable, the profound crime of . . . using a Jimmy Hat on your Johnson when you do the Wild Thing.

On September 17, 1983, Pope John Paul II told a group of priests that “contraception is to be judged objectively so profoundly unlawful as never to be, for any reason, justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal to maintaining that, in human life, situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognize God as God.”

On June 5, 1987, the Holy Father warned clergy and theologians of their grave obligation to faithfully transmit the Church’s teaching on this subject: “. . . The Church’s teaching on contraception does not belong to the category of matter open to free discussion among theologians. Teaching the contrary amounts to leading the moral consciences of spouses into error.”

Pope John Paul II also explained that contraception contradicts and is opposed to true love: “Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality.” (Familiaris Consortio, #32)

The Holy Father has explained that when contraception is used, the marital act ceases to be an act of love: “. . . [When using contraception} the conjugal act, deprived of its interior truth because it is artificially deprived of its procreative capacity, ceases also to be an act of love.” (General Audience of August 22, 1984)

The constant teaching of the Church was again stated on March 1, 1997 when the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family issued a Vade Mecum for Confessors Concerning Some Aspects of the Morality of Conjugal Life. Included in this document is the following statement: “The Church has always taught the intrinsic evil of contraception, that is, of every marital act intentionally rendered unfruitful. This teaching is to be held as definitive and irreformable. Contraception is gravely opposed to marital chastity; it is contrary to the good of the transmission of life (the procreative aspect of matrimony) and to the reciprocal self-giving of the spouses (the unitive aspect of matrimony); it harms true love and denies the sovereign role of God in the transmission of life (n. 24).”

As Pope John Paul II has stated, “The heart has become a battlefield between love and lust. The more lust dominates the heart, the less the heart experiences the nuptial meaning of the body. It becomes less sensitive to the gift of the person, which expresses that meaning in the mutual relations of the man and woman.” (General audience of July 23, 1980)

OK – I’ll say it: this is insane.

The basic cultural conflicts of our time are at heart conflicts between moral visions grounded on incompatible values (and to some extent incompatible factual beliefs). It is difficult to criticize values from a neutral standpoint, but we can at least notice the weird ends some of them lead us to – and that’s as good a reason for rejecting them as any. Nonsense like the above is just nutty – that’s all. People who think like this are nutty, and there’s no reason to take them, or their beliefs, seriously. Aquinas’s Five-Fold Proof be damned – all we need to know is this: a religion that is grounded on a profound disgust for humanity in its simplest and most definitive expressions of itself isn’t worth taking seriously, and a religion that is this perversely hysterical over sex is . . . well, nutty.

Commenting on a story about moves to allow pharmacists to prescribe emergency contraception, the editor of CovenantNews.com offers the following:

Editor asks, What does the future hold for a nation possessed by the Spirit of Murder? With each expansion of death comes escalation. Local churches hold silent prayer vigils outside Eckerd Drugs? Anti-abortion protest at local drug stores? Drug Store ‘Escorts’ volunteer at CVS Pharmacies? Off duty cops moonlight at abortion-drug stores? Local Right to Life director opposes protesters and graphic pro-life signs at drug stores? Operation Rescue holds sit-in at abortion-drug store? Court creates ‘Buffer Zones’ around abortion-drug stores? U.S. Congress adds ‘Pharmacies’ to the Freedom of Accsess to Clinic Enterance Act, President said he will sign bill into law? Fire guts local drug store, FBI suspects arson? Pharmacist is keynote speaker at NARAL fund raiser? Pharmacists wear bulletproof vests?

That’s interesting.

Why would a “pro-life” blogger imagine that providing safe and legal contraceptive services would result in protests, blockades, security details, harassment, sit-ins, arsons, and shootings? We were told over and over that those tactics – rampant at abortion clinics, with deadly results – are not representative of the anti-choice movement, that they (in their thousands, over and over, year after year) were each and every time spontaneous aberrations caused by a few “bad apples”. Now “pro-lifers” themselves are predicting “escalation” of the characteristic violence of the anti-choice religious right in response to the newest reproductive-health technology.

I suspect many supporters of women’s rights have the same expectation, but it would sound accusatory if we said it. I think we should take “pro-lifers” at their word – and prepare for the worst.