Former Friend

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 3:17 AM By Dottie
Here is another HERETIC who calls himself “Catholic” comitting the Mortal Sin of SCANDAL. When is this Bishop going to excommunicate him? Enforce Canon 915. When is this Bishop going to publically refute him? When are the current officers of Catholic Charities in SFO going to publically refute him? Write to and then picket the Bishop’s officed if he continues to allow these serious abuses. Then write to the Vatican with a copy to the US Papal Nuncio. When a Bishop does not stop a SCANDAL in his own Diocese, he participates in it.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 3:57 AM By Mary
For Heaven’s sake, there is no surprise in this. Why was Mr. Cahill given credibility, and cushy, well-paying jobs in the Catholic bureaucracy through the years, anyway? No surprise here; only that the naivete (or worse) of his hierarchical bosses is, again, astounding.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 4:09 AM By Former Altar Boy
Although it keeps being repeated, I’d like to know who took that survey that purports to show that “95 percent of Catholic women of child-bearing age use contraception,” and what the question(s) actually was/were. For example, was the profile of women who simply claimed to be Catholic? Were the women asked if they attended Sunday Mass regularly?

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 5:04 AM By Tony de New York
With ‘brother’s’ like this, who needs enemies?

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 5:37 AM By Fr.Charles Carpenter
Brian Cahill does not have faith. His article does a real good job at destroying whatever credibility left-wing Catholics may have given to their pastors. Shame on him and on the others who think as he does.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 5:43 AM By k
This guy again?

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 5:48 AM By St. Christopher
What a Catholic! That Brian Cahill is so grand a thinker and believer — Wow. And yet, he is the product of a post-Vatican II episcopacy in America that failed to take seriously Humanae Vitae and other teachings and directions of the Church. The curse of poor pastoral leadership will haunt America for decades if not longer. So many people were brought up in a Church that, in America, was really more “Catholic Lite” than truly Catholic in its teachings, policy and practice. Now, of course, chickens are home, roosting happily. Unfortunately, so much pressure is now being placed on the shoulders of Cardinal Dolan and others like him, that there is really little chance for improvement. Most Catholics, when they see the opposition of the failthul stewards of the Faith, react like Cahill, “What’s the big deal”? The Church is slowly starting to stand up and say this is who and what we are, not an accommodationist social services group (although there are still many, many preists and bishops that live for “social justice” only, instead of salvation, however painful the message). Homosexual sex is morally wrong, always evil, never acceptable. Abortion is morally wrong, and what Obama is attempting to do is also morally wrong. Good luck teaching the little ones now, particularly as, for the most part, the teachers are themselves learning as they go.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 6:00 AM By InformedAndFree
Former director? I hope he was part of a good house-cleaning at Cathic Charities. His statement does not surprise me as many officials (not all) at some charitable organizations associated with Catholics only appreciated the church for its social justice component. Let’s pray for this man that he may grow to know the beauty of our entire faith, not just certain aspects of it.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 6:12 AM By JLS
Maybe next Cahill will fire all the bishops.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 6:33 AM By Ted
Cahill isn’t just off the reservation, he’s off his rocker ! Like Pelosi, he should be denied the sacraments until he rethinks his secularist stands on issues affecting the Church. He says he’s not leaving, but his bishop needs to get him by his shirt collar and waistband and toss him out. I don’t know what other lay people may think about these issues, but I am willing to wager they do NOT agree (in the majority) with Cahill, Call to Action, or the so-called gay community activists who wear rainbows to Mass and expect communion. This guy’s the extremist he accuses others of being, and deserves to be shouted down by faithful Catholics.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 6:34 AM By Sawyer
Further evidence that leftists are enemies of Catholicism. Cahill has long shown his true colors as a “c”atholic.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 6:39 AM By John Hinshaw
This man personifies the problem of the archaic, accommodationist Catholic Church of the 20th century. These Church bureaucrats ensconced themselves while naive Bishops got their politics from the National Catholic Reporter.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 7:36 AM By JMJ
And this Cahill call himself “catholic”? Has any Bishop openly excommunicated this mindless fraud? Now that Lent is upon us, we should give more time to pray for these lost sheep and await for that great day when they will come back home to Jesus and rejoin His One & Only True Church. +JMJ+

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 8:27 AM By SGhosn
No, Mr. Cahill, the Bishops may not speak for the majority of “Catholic Americans” but they do speak for The Church, their own well informed conscience, and what our religious rights are as Americans. Too bad you don’t and never have. And sorry, I don’t buy the majority of “Catholic women use contraception” excuse. Everyone has lied, does that mean the Bishops should now give permission to lie?

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 8:31 AM By charles
My guess is he will still be invited for lunch by numerous SF Archdiocese members still on the reservation.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 9:10 AM By Paul Martin
Not only is Brian Cahill a very serious and fair-minded, articulate and prayerful Catholic, he is a good and painfully honest man and a Christian in EVERY sense of the word and it is SHAMEFUL that the rabble of usual contributors to this post suggest he is lost, or a fraud or should be tossed out and denied communion as if the blessed sacrament is yours and not God’s. Paul Martin Moraga, CA

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 9:30 AM By Frank
GOOD JOB Cahill. All of those who are bashing you and your position are simply people who can quote Canon Law and claim to “know all about religion” and yet at the same time not have a clue as to “What faith and the message of Jesus is ALL ABOUT”, to roughly quote Monsignor O’Reilly 1971.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 9:34 AM By gordianknow
Chickens coming home to roost for the Bishops who went along with this guy’s agenda. The problems is the bishops, guys like this are a dime a dozen out there.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 9:46 AM By pete
Sadly it is rather true that the Bishops have no credibility with most laity on contraception. The Bishops have not TAUGHT about it since 1968. That is changing with newer bishops, but more so by some of the laity themselves. The fact that the Archbishop DID NOT DISCERN WHAT THIS MAN BELIEVED, is proof of the bureaucratic cancer in all to many dioceses that keeps the bishops insulated, btw a post Vat II development. May the successor to Archbishop Niederaur be up to the task!

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 9:59 AM By JOHN
Cahill could not say what he says and do what he does without the blessing of Abp Niederauer—so put the responsibility where it belongs—on the Abp!

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 10:09 AM By Mark from PA
“The reality that affordable health care, including contraception, is the most effective way to significantly reduce abortion.” There is an element of truth in this statement. I think it is very important that we reduce abortions. What good is it to be against abortion but to encourage policies that lead to more abortions? This is an issue that I have with some in the Republican party. They give lip service to the pro-life cause but they back policies which don’t lessen the number of abortions.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 10:55 AM By Elizabeth
Everyone, please pray for a new AB of San Francisco who is orthodox, will clean house and have NO history or connections with California or San Francisco!!! We need a new ‘breath of fresh air’ to say the least….

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 11:13 AM By Clinton
If Mr. Cahill does not agree with teachings of the Catholic Church, then why would he consider himself a member of the Church? What it seems that he and his ilk want is a ‘church’ devoid of all holiness and tradition and instead one that caters to the desires of the liberal left.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 11:51 AM By MaryG
If Cahill buys into this mandate, I want to know what he’ll say when Obama mandates what care, what medications he WON’T get…. and please don’t tell me they are doing it already. Bullspit.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 12:15 PM By FrMichael
Another “professional Catholic” without the virtue of faith. I wonder how many of these people have to make public fools of themselves before the US bishops start making a serious self-examination about how such people led Catholic institutions.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 12:23 PM By OSCAR
Mark from PA, there are more abortions due to contraception – contracpetion fails frequently. Contraception promotes sex outside of marriage, which promotes the spread of sexually transmitted disease, and abortion. Do you think dealing with these medical issues are free? (Obama wants all of us to think its free.) What do you have against abstainence ?

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 12:33 PM By Dottie
Mark from PA, Have you ever read the health warnings on contraceptives? Do you think it’s healthy or normal for a healty women to chemically change her hormones? Medicaid for the poor has been paying for contraceptives for many years. Abortions have gone up in these populations, stds have gone up, unwed Mothers have gone up, etc., etc. The remedies to rampant immoral sexual activties are not FREE. Think man.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 1:53 PM By Delilah
Mark from PA. The “pill” does not prevent conception. It thins the lining of the uterine wall so much that the embryo can not imbed. Instead, it is “flushed out”. This is a chemically induced abortion. And many women experience this and are unaware of what is happening. Their doctors simply say this normal every once and a while. The tragedy is that the woman’s uterus may never recover and she becomes infertile. Add to this the blood clots and cancer risk, what part of contraception is good for women?

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 1:54 PM By Mark from PA
Oscar, I don’t have anything against abstinence. I was a virgin when I was a teen. I never had pre-marital sex. I think kids should enjoy being kids and not try to grow up too fast.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 2:24 PM By Tracy
Delilah, for the sake of accuracy; the pill IS designed to prevent the ovaries from releasing an egg, thus preventing conception. However, as you correctly stated in your post, the pills secondary function is to prevent the embryo from implanting in the uterus, if the first function fails, causing an early chemical abortion.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 2:41 PM By John
Sorry, Mr. Cahill, you are missing the point – hopefully unintentionally. If this ‘compromise’ is accepted, the Executive branch would be able to define what is is exempt and what is not. This is typical of this administration – offer something that looks good on the surface but serves the agenda of Mr. Obama and his secular agenda. The mandate needs to go. Period.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 3:18 PM By Tracy
Mark you are just plain wrong. In the documentary, “Blood Money”, Carol Everett, a former abortion clinic owner, shares how she would go into the Junior High Schools to encourage the girls to start taking the “pill” and to become sexually active. Carol knew that when the “low dose birth control pill” she was handing out failed, which she states “always did”, the poor girl’s next move would be to come to her for an abortion, which she gladly provided. Carol then states she knew that once a girl had her first abortion, she could expect up to an additional 2 to 3 abortions from her. The “free” birth control pills were simply the cost of advertising for her lucrative abortion business. This is no different than the drug pusher who at first gives his drugs away for free until his victim is hooked.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 3:43 PM By cjo
As Pope Paul VI said……The smoke of satan has indeed entered the Church…in a BIG way !!!

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 4:03 PM By RR
MarkfromPA: The birth control pill IS AN ABORTION. A baby CAN be conceived while taking the birth control pill, but the pill causes the woman to abort the baby because implantation cannot take place. You claim to be pro-life, but you are giving the pro-life cause lip service by promoting the birth control pill, which is AN ABORTION.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 4:49 PM By dan
To Paul Martin and Frank: did our Lord speak through Pope Paul VI on Humanae Vitae or not? If He did, then the responsibility of faithful Catholics is to heed the encyclical. To say He did not speak through His Vicar on earth is, essentially, to deny the faith. To PA: I think statistics show that contraception and abortion go hand in hand, along with STDs.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 5:50 PM By Delilah
Tracy, the original pill that was seqential in nature indeed prevented ovulation. Many women could not tolerate that pill. Drug companie came up with “combination pills” that had reduced hormones in them. Again many women could not tolerate the high levels of hormones. As the hormone level was decreased in the pill, it lost it’s efficacy. If the pill was not taken at the exact same time every day, ovulation could and often did occur. I urge you to watch the movie Blood Money. I know where of I speak. I had two miscarriages, I named the girl Regina and the boy Adam. I also had two “spontaneous abortions” and yes I was taking birth control pills. I just hope that my two babies that I aborted albeit unintentionally, can forgive me. Pax

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 5:52 PM By Anne T.
When I was unhappy with one of my jobs, I applied for another one, was accepted, quit my old job and was very happy in the new one, and with more pay and no union dues. What is stopping this guy and some others from doing just that. Stop whining because you cannot force the Church to do your bidding.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 7:16 PM By Mark from PA
I am not promoting birth control pills but women that use them are not having an abortion. Tracy, what you write is awful. I had never heard of that.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 7:23 PM By Life Lady 
I don’t have to kid myself as Mr Cahill apparently is doing by claiming to be a Catholic. I happen to live as a Catholic and hold to all the tradition and teaching of the Church. She is my Mother who cares for that part of me that is forever: my immortal soul. It is therefore my right, by these reasons, that I can and call myself a Catholic. I doubt that Mr. Cahill can honestly call himself a Catholic, and if he does I will not acknowledge him as such. Since I can’t recognize him as a Catholic anything he says as a supposed Catholic should be refuted and ignored because of his obvious lack of understanding of our faith. Someone called him a “christian” but I don’t even recognize his statements resembling that faith either. Has anyone told him this yet? Poor man is delusional. He should know that. I am going to try to find contact information for him so that he can be aware that he is not speaking as a Catholic and his claiming to be one is not justified but laughable. Poor man.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 7:57 PM By gravey
Cahill’s past appointment as head of CCSF gives him faux credibility and makes Cdl. Leveda and Abp. Niederauer look foolish.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 9:21 PM By MacDonald
Mr. Cahill seems to be PERPETUALLY angry at the Catholic Church, which paid his salary for years.

Posted Thursday, February 23, 2012 11:07 PM By Jeff
Mark is way off the mark. Ever since the mass distribution of artificial birth control we have seen the following; Increase in promiscuous Increased STDs Increased unwed mothers And yes – Increased abortions Most abortions result from women on birth control

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 3:26 AM By RR
MarkfromPA: Did you not read what I wrote to you? Women ARE having abortions when they are on the pill. We are to respect life, as the Pope and the Church says, from the moment of conception until death. What part of this don’t you understand? The pill is an abortion!

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 6:35 AM By Tracy
Delilah, yes what you say is true. I should have clarified that the secondary effects of the “pill” are the one which is almost always the result of an end to an pregnancy. And yes I have seen the movie “Blood Money” which I encourage everyone, especially teens to see.

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 7:17 AM By JLS
Once again, I offer to the Church my plan for saving half the money they pay to those turncoats like Cahill. Simply don’t hire the position, pay me half, save half, and no damage will be done. Brilliant plan, right?

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 7:26 AM By Tracy
Mark from PA. From where do you come up with the statement, “women that use them (birth control pills) are not having an abortion”? The insert provided with the “pill” states what Delilah and others have said, that it prevents the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. Maybe you lack a basic knowledge of how reproduction takes place. There are excellent websites to help you with this. However, let me just say this; you, I and everyone on this planet were once a single cell! We ALL started out this way, whether in our mothers fallopian tube or in a petri dish. It takes about a week from the single cell state to what we call an embryo for this tiny human being to travel down to the uterus and implant into it’s mothers womb. So if the pill makes it impossible for this tiny human to implant into it’s mothers womb, or the lab technician discards it, call it what you want, but you have a human being who is no longer alive. If one of those two things had happened to you or me way back when, you and I would not be having this dialogue. As far as what I mentioned about the former abortion clinic owner, Carol Everett, look her up. She has a web site. Also LifeNews.com just today has another story about Planned Parenthood pushing sex ed on young girls. Todays story is about teaching sex to girl scouts as young as five. Why do you think PP always screams about wanting to be the sole provider of sex ed in the schools? Why do you think they hate “abstinence only” curriculum? They know what Carol Everett knew; you need a lot of unwanted pregnancies to have a lot of abortions, which If you didn’t know it, PP provides by the millions. And yes, my friend, that translates into lots of cash! Oh, and sex ed. in schools is apparently not providing enough business for PP these days. Now they are tweeting the information to girls.

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 8:13 AM By peter
“Contraception promotes sex outside of marriage” Oscar, you are seriously ignorant if you really believe this. People have sex. That is a fact of life. And people will have sex with or without contraception, in or out of marriage. Sex without contraception produces BABIES. Unexpected babies. Unwanted babies = abortions. Get the connection? Contraception PREVENTS abortions. In the real world, it is irrational to be against both.

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 8:47 AM By Dana
Peter, people lie, cheat and envy what their neighbors have. Should we just throw out the ten commandments because no one keeps them? The Catholic Church and the Bible are our plumb line to what is true and what is beautiful, and what every Christian is called to live up to. Just because it is difficult does not mean it is impossible. I grew up in a time where people did not use contraceptives…we simply said no when unmarried and accepted God’s will when we married. Because everyone was expected to do this, it actually wasn’t all that hard. The fact that ‘everyone’ is using contraceptives makes it seem strange to say it is wrong, but like C.S. Lewis wrote, (this is just a summation) if everyone is rushing madly to jump off a cliff, even if it seems strange, wouldn’t you rather be forging your way up the hill?

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 9:01 AM By Dana
Also, it is unkind to tell someone they’re ignorant because they believe something other than what you believe.I agree totally with Oscar because I am informed & a woman who has studied and experienced much about contraceptives and I would say to you that you’re not only misinformed but uninformed. Are you a Catholic? Your ‘logic’ defies logic! To say contraception prevents abortions is utterly untrue…birth control pills often act as an abortificant. This is a fact few women are aware of, and another thing kept from women is the damage done to their bodies by ingesting unnatural hormones into their bodies for years and years! My doctor many years ago told me that women should take time off the pill to give the body time to cleanse itself…he told me that we ‘burn up our uterus by maintaining a red alert (pregnancy symptoms) in our bodies for too long a time. No one tells us about the relationship of breast cancer to taking the pill but much is known about the connection.

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 9:22 AM By Tracy
peter, unwanted babies = adoption. Did I say that? Of course we know that statement is a thing of the past. And why is that? For the past 30 years we have been taught to believe adoption is worst than abortion. PP, FPA, and their ilk make loads of money off of unwanted babies by killing them, not placing them for adoption. If you care to learn the truth I challenge you to watch “Abortion the inside story” on YouTube. There you will see the testimony of former abortion providers. If after seeing this, you still think that contraception is not the primary tool used by the abortionist to provide more abortion business for him/her, all I can say is that you are seriously brain washed.

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 12:24 PM By Camille
In reality, although some Bishops may be attempting to defend the faith from Satan, the USCCB, on the contrary, is sneaking around Catholic Dogma by keeping silent in the pulpits and meeting rooms of their Diocesan boundaries. We taxpayers are footing the bill for free condom distribution on community college campuses. Today, the college level young adult, tomorrow the high school level. the Dioceses do nothing, educate no one on the social issues and let good Catholics hang out to dry at meetings when they stand up publicly to defend faith and moral and good, sensible health care practices.

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 2:08 PM By JLS
Wrong, peter. People do not “have” sex; they “do” sex. They actively act, but “have” is one more bit of propaganda to convince people that they have no choice. Calvinist doctrine betrays choice and free will and causes tons of the problems in society today. If only the Calvinist sects would jettison that absolutely stupid ideology, they’d probably be able to move forward and upward towards full access to Jesus.

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 3:03 PM By Marietta
I am glad to see Mr. Cahill has spoken out. As a Catholic woman and a citizen of a great democracy, I am appalled at the disrespect shown to individual conscience and individual religious freedom. I have no wish to tell my friends of other faiths that they need to live by the dictates of my conscience and because I have the power to be a business owner, I have the power to require they live by mine.

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 3:10 PM By Abeca Christian
Dana good comments!

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 6:10 PM By Anne T.
Thank you ladies for speaking out truthfully about the birthcontrol pill. Mark PA, these ladies are speaking the truth. I myself am alive today since I never took the birthcontrol pill or any other kind of estrogen in pills. I have had cancer three times over twenty years. All three times my cancers were susceptible to estrogen meaning that had I taken birthcontrol pills, which have estrogen in them, it would have caused by tumors unknowingly to grow faster. Because I never took any kind of estrogen and checked my body for cancers once a month, my tumors have always been very small. I found one myself while checking. As I have written before on this website, a priest talked me out of taking the Pills that my doctor gave me before I could take them and talked me into a Natural Family Planning Method taught by the Couple to Couple League. Later I found a female pro-life Catholic doctor who refused to give the Pill to women since she thought it was so unhealthy and dangerous for them. She was one of the doctors who perfomed minor surgery on me the first time I had cancer. The natural family planning methods are now very accurate, especially with all the kits on the market to determine a women’s fertile time. There are other reasons that a woman should abstain from sex before marriage. I do not want to go into detail here, but besides the possiblity of getting STDs, some women’s bodies will reject their husband’s sperm and make them infertile if they have had too many partners before their marriage. There are all kinds of problems caused by promiscuity.

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 7:10 PM By JLS
Well, then, Marietta, you claim to be Catholic but you speak another religion. Suit yourself.

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 8:05 PM By Anne T.
I guess I should explain something I put in my last post with more clarity. According to an article I read in the Couple to Couple League Magazine many years ago, a man and a woman produce a chemical bond when they have intimate relations. It affects the woman more than the man, so that some women have built up something similar to anti-bodies in their system regarding fertility in the future to another man if they have had intimate relations with too many men. In other words, they might not be able to chemically bond with a future husband which is necessary for fertility. That is the best way I know how to explain it.

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 8:14 PM By Bob One
Marietta, would you please explain what you meant by your last sentence. I got the impression that you meant that since you are a business owner, you can make people live by your religious beliefs. Is that what you meant? I suspect not, since that would be illegal.

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 8:46 PM By Kenneth M. Fisher
Marietta, 3:03 PM, “I have the power to be a business owner” spoken like a true feminist, but not a Catholic! God bless, yours in Their Hearts, Kenneth M, Fisher

Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 9:23 PM By JLS
I wonder what it would be if couples ignored all the advice and got themselves tuned into nature, while simply obeying the Commandments. Nobody ever talks about this. The hype in our time is so extreme I think few there are who can keep from its snares. Mostly we step to some formula that is piped into the natural state. Jesus warns us not to dance to the tunes in the marketplace. It is as though fear has become institutionalized regulated by the marketplace. If you have never thought or acted beyond the call of the marketplace, it is never too late to make the effort. When Obama said he wouldn’t want his daughter punished by a baby, he was speaking to the normal condition of modern minds, souls, hearts and strengths. He is criticized for saying it, but the profound problem is that there are few who actually deep down do not believe him. This ability to contact the population on its deepest levels is why he was and may again be elected. Not a single Republican candidate talks deeper than the economy … it’s money, money, money from the GOP platform. From the Dem platform the soul is addressed, errantly but addressed nevertheless. People respond more to the soul than to ideas, more to dreams than to theories. The only salvation is from Jesus, and He has given the bishops charge over this. So far all I hear from them is some faint squeaking from somewhere hidden in the forest.

Posted Saturday, February 25, 2012 8:13 AM By Anne T.
Regarding my last post, the doctor only gave me those birthcontrol pills because I had a medical condition that might have harmed any child I bore. I did not feel comfortible taking the Pills, So I asked a priest, in the confessional, for advice. He told me not to take them and recommended Natural Family Planning because of the situation. As far as I know, he did not even know who I was. I only tell this to possibly help save another woman’s life if she has a similar situation and to discourage the use of unnatural methods of birthcontrol as they are harmful to woman and possibly to future children. Besides, the estrogen in the Pill is helping to destroy some of our waterways because the estrogen in our sewage is helping to deform fish. You can read it all on line, and not all the reports about the waterways are from any Catholic source.

Posted Saturday, February 25, 2012 8:35 AM By Anne T.
Yes, JLS, most of this is about — you guessed it — money. Fishermen like to sell fish, ranchers like to sell beef and pharmaceutical companies like to sell pharmaceuticals. I have no doubt, too, that some doctors, politicians and others who are pushing the Pill have stock in some of those companies. There is a saying taken from the New Testament, “Great is Diana goddess of the Ephesians.” It is used to signify that self- interest blinds the eyes. St. Paul had to deal with that very situation in the book of Acts when the pagans hated him for putting a damper on their statue business regarding that goddess.

Posted Saturday, February 25, 2012 11:46 AM By Judith Brown
Dear Anne T: I just want to confirm what you are saying about the chemical compatibility between a couple when they are sexually intimate. I used to work in a Laboratory where we had commenced to provide a test for infertility based on the following: the male had had a vasectomy; the woman’s body adapted to sperm-less semen. They then decide they want a child; he has his vasectomy reversed (fairly successful now that we don’t cauterize the vas deferens but simply cut a little portion out (being snipped!) & ligate ends (easy re-connection). He is now not ‘firing blanks”. They don’t conceive. Her body has developed anti-bodies against sperm-laden semen. This scenario plays out also with a fertile man having intercourse with a woman who used to “sleep” with a sterilized man (so many people with various ‘partners’ today). My lab director couldn’t understand why I wasn’t sympathetic toward this infertility problem – really I couldn’t get worked up over it…people mutilating normal-functioning tissue, turning their bodies on and off like a faucet. No, this is not the way of the Creator who created our reproductive systems (note the scientific name for this ‘system’); we did not create our reproductive abilities ourselves! Fertility is a gift!

Posted Saturday, February 25, 2012 1:24 PM By Dana
Thank you, Abeca! And thank you Anne T and I’m so glad your listened to your priest and that you’ve managed to keep your cancer under control. I wish that women like us had more of a voice in helping young women make better decisions. I hate to use trite or mean words to delineate women into separate categories but when I hear ‘feminazis’ like Boxer & Pelosi speaking for us women, I get so upset hearing their hateful lies, don’t you? And that was incredibly interesting Judith…it reminds me of the studies of how women choose different mates when they’re not on the pill and vice versa. We need a magazine with a format (and nothing else, thanks!) like Ms. to educate Catholic women on the latest discoveries about birth control, how to communicate to our grandchildren when they’re being raised in secular homes, etc. It could be called ‘Mistress Mary’ (quite contrary) or something that wouldn’t be frumpy like ‘Catholic Women’. Just sayin’ (laugh) After all, Mrs & Ms both are diminutives of mistress.

Posted Saturday, February 25, 2012 1:53 PM By JLS
More than a gift, fertility is an intrinsic part of human nature and the operating condition of God’s first commandment after the Fall (“operating condition” being an unscientific term meaning fullness of marriage, which means one man and one woman and untold numbers of children).

Posted Saturday, February 25, 2012 3:30 PM By Anne T.
Thank you, Judith Brown for explaining the problem far better than I did or could do.

Posted Saturday, February 25, 2012 11:52 PM By JonJ
Delilah, you stated that “birth control does not prevent conception. It thins the uterine wall so much that the embryo cannot imbed.” This information is not correct. In fact, the primary method of action for oral contraceptives (OC’s) is by preventing ovulation. In the unusual even that ovulation does occur, then the secondary method of action is the thickening of the cervical mucus layer, which prevents sperm from reaching the egg. On the rare occasion that fertilization does occur, only then is it possible for the thinning of the uterine mucus layer to prevent implantation. Now, current medical theory SUGGESTS this can occur, but there is no direct evidence. However, there is strong inferential evidence it does happen. Yet, spontaneous abortions (implantation failures) can also occur without using OC’s. In fact, inferential evidence also strongly suggests that a married couple using OC’s will suffer fewer total implantation failures than a couple who does not use birth control. The reason why is that the OC’s will prevent over 97% of the “natural” implantation failures by preventing fertilization in the first place, while only a very small number of implantation failures will be caused by OC’s. However, catholic theology holds the natural implantation failures to be God’s will, while implantation failures caused by OC’s occur due to sinful human intervention. Thus, while OC’s prevent significantly more implantation failures than they cause, the implantation failures they cause are sinful.

Posted Sunday, February 26, 2012 12:08 AM By JonJ
As for the cancer risks associated with birth control pills: they cause small increases in risks of breast and cervix cancer, while decreasing the risks of endometrial and ovary cancer. While some people like Anne avoid cancers caused by estrogen (she must have been prescribed “combination” birth control pills that use both estrogen and progestins as opposed to progestin only OC’s.), other women avoid endometrial and ovary cancer. This suggests that OC’s might be theologically acceptable in the case where a woman is not sexually active, yet has a strong family history of either endometrial or ovary cancer as a medical preventative measure (I would appreciate input from any priest who reads this post).

Posted Sunday, February 26, 2012 1:13 PM By Tracy
JonJ, sounds to me like you should carefully read Cal Catholics Feb. 24th article, “A Lie is A Lie”. Professional medical organizations are ignoring or denying current research and pushing skewed statistics onto the public and medical community. One example is when the medical establishment refers to a “pregnancy” they now are referring to an implanted embryo only, not a fertilized egg. This is only for the purpose to confuse the public and unsuspecting busy doctors, who trust the professional organizations for current information and likely haven’t had the time do their own research to uncover the truth Another thing is your professional sounding rhetoric that bcp’s “cause small increases” in the risk of breast cancer. This is blatantly false as well. I challenge you to go to the “Coalition on Abortion Breast Cancer” website. In addition to showing the research on the Abortion/Breast Cancer Link, they also show the research on the “Pill” and breast cancer link. Follow the money! Planned Parenthood has loads of it to keep their lies alive. They care only about their extravagant life styles, not women’s health. I am so thankful that a few State governments have figured this out and have defunded Planned Parenthood.

Posted Sunday, February 26, 2012 3:42 PM By JLS
Once again the blind try to examine every detail hoping they will someday see. But it is a wasted effort, when the simple and correct action of mind, heart and soul is to believe God, who forbids messing with conception. Read Apocalypse 12, and note how the great dragon tries to destroy both pure creation and Creator.

Posted Sunday, February 26, 2012 4:18 PM By Anne T.
No, thanks. Jon J. I do not want your PIlls. I have already had enough brushes with death. I have never even had hot flashes while going through menopause, neither did my mother or sister. There are more natural ways to help those things, but I did not even have to use those. I recommend women ask Judy Brown of the American Life League for such information or the Couple to Couple Natural Family Planning Foundation and not Jon J. She works with some fine doctors. You can find her on the EWTN website when you click forum at the top, then Questions and Answers. She writes for the Natural Family Planning section, or you can get her telephone number from the American Life League website.

Posted Sunday, February 26, 2012 6:29 PM By JonJ
Tracy, you dispute my use of “small” increases in breast and cervical cancer risk. Your link listed a “meta-analysis” (a meta-analysis is an analysis of multiple separate studies) published by Mayo clinic that stated that OC’s taken before having a first child increased overall breast cancer incidence by 44% ( Kahlenborn C, Modugno F, Potter D, Severs W. Mayo Clinic Proceedings 2006;81(10):1290-1302). While 44% is certainly “large” in a certain sense, the overall breast cancer incidence rate is 124 per 100,000 women (annually). Thus, the overall increased breast cancer risk is approximately .55 per 1000 women. Since this risk is also decreased by reduced endometrial and cervical cancer risk, you’re looking at an overall increased risk of around 1 in 4000 women. Thus, the overall increased risk from OC’s takes the rate from 124 per 100,000 to around 150 per 100,000. If we exclude the endometrial and ovary cancer reductions we’re looking at an overall risk rate of 179 per 100,000. Bottom line. we’re looking at about 2.5 to 3 percent increased lifetime risk of cancer. Since survival rates for cancer in the US are around 70%, the increased mortality rates are indeed small. However, you state the medical community “lied” to women about these risks. For example, your site claims that the medical community never warned women about the increased breast cancer risks caused by OC’s until 2002 (or so), even though the information was available in the 80’s. That statement is a complete distortion. The reason you didn’t have warnings until the early 2000’s, was that until then, the general medical consensus was that hormone therapy prevented cancer. A major study published in 2002 convinced the profession otherwise. Thus, physicians no longer recommended HRT and warned about cancer risks with OC’s after that time. Yes, some studies were available that indicated against the prevailing opinion in the 80’s, but they were contradicted by other studies which seemed more credible.

Posted Sunday, February 26, 2012 6:47 PM By JonJ
Tracy, you also give an example of medical establishment :”lies” due to the practice of referring to a “pregnancy” as only an implanted embryo instead of a fertilized egg. A cursory search of medical literature provides what I think is an obvious reason. A 2000 review article concerning the implantation failure rates resulting from OC’s (and the consequent ethical issues of patient notification) stated they did not have a current reliable test to detect a fertilized egg that had not implanted in the uterus. The article SPECULATED about how such a test might be developed. Thus, the medical establishment defines “pregnancy” as an implanted embryo not out of some machiavellian plot to deceive catholics, but more due to technical limitations of science. Another obvious reason for this terminology is that there are a host of medically significant physiological reactions that occur with implantation, that do not occur when a fertilized egg fails to implant. Certainly, these issues mean that, for purposes of catholic theological analysis, we can’t use the medical journal reporting of “pregnancy” rates; but its not some evil scheme aimed at the catholic church. (P.S. I am not a medical professional. I have a masters in molecular biology, then practiced bio tech patent law–thus I can read journal articles and critique experimental methods, but am not a professional in the field. I currently work for a startup that provides IT for doctors and hospitals–a career change, but I do talk to physicians, and we market at medical conferences. Since I have a science education, many of the lectures “stick” even though I’m not really in the field).

Posted Monday, February 27, 2012 10:26 AM By Anne T.
Jon J, according to what I watched on the EWTN Network, the birthcontrol pill does help some things such as acne and possibly ovarian or uterine cancer. Nevertheless, the bad effects far outweigh the good, and it does can cause breast cancer and makes it more aggressive. When I was younger, women were not having their breasts cut off at younger and younger ages out of a feat of getting breast cancer or from already having it as they are doing now. My grandmother had five children, nursed them all including one of her grandsons, never took the birthcontrol pill and nevr got any type of cancer. By the time my mother had me, the doctors were pushing bottle feeding, a big mistake. My mother got breast cancer at 69, and I got it around 48, probably because we did not nurse most of our children since we never took the Pill, and also since cancer was on my maternal grandfather’s side. None of my aunts got breast cancer to my knowledge, and they never took any kind of birthcontrol pills.. I had a great great great grancmother who had thirteen children, five dying at birth, and she lived to 83. Some of the healthiest and youngest looking women I know have more than three children, so something is going on with the natural use of the body, and tampering too much with its natural uses can be disasterous. Women also had less stree for the most part because many of them stayed home and did not have the problems that come with a job while raising children. I am not saying that all women should have a lot of children or give up their jobs, but the old way did have its advantages. My grandmother died around 73 from heart disease. Had she been in the work force, she probably would have died much younger from stress.

Posted Monday, February 27, 2012 10:29 AM By RR
JonJ: Stop with all of your articles, surveys, statistics, studies…. Please. The Church and the Popes have spoken and they say NO TO BIRTH CONTROL. There is NOTHING good that comes out of using birth control. You may know a lot about biology ?? but aparently you know nothing about the Church’s teaching on birth control. Give it up, JonJ. The Church said no, so obey God’s laws, not man’s laws.

Posted Monday, February 27, 2012 10:58 AM By Tracy
JonJ, so now that you thoroughly defended your position, I guess you think that 124 out of 100,000 women contracting breast cancer, is a small price to pay for having the freedom to have sex without the need to deliver a baby, or let’s say controlling your teenage acne. While I will admit that acne is a disease of the skin, pregnancy is not a disease of the uterus. As for your explanation about when a pregnancy begins, I ask you to go back to your post of Feb. 25. You state (I’ll paraphrase) that while in medical theory it is reasoned that the thinning of the uterine lining resulting from the use of the pill may prevent an embryo from implanting in the uterus, there is no direct evidence that it does. Yet the “pill” manufactures themselves claim in their product informational insert provided to the pharmacist that this IS a secondary effect of the “pill”. Why do you think that pro-life pharmacist have been refusing to dispense the “pill” on the grounds of conscience? Why do you think that their professional organization has backed them up? (By the way, to my knowledge “The American Pharmacist Association” is the only major medical association to take the stance of protecting their profession’s conscientious rights and they should be applauded.) You also stated that it is a “rare event” that ovulation occurs while using the pill. (Please read my post to Mark from PA on Feb 21st and Feb. 24th for further comment on this). Lastly, while you rightly state that nature itself is at times the cause of an embryo failing to implant in the uterus, you unfortunately seem to infer that if the “pill” causes this to occur once-in-a-while it’s thus not such a big deal. JonJ, although I do not know your reason, I do accept that you are a strong advocate for the pill. I doubt my comments will change that.

Posted Monday, February 27, 2012 11:20 AM By Anne T.
Jon J, those women I mentioned in my family were not even Catholic, but I knew or knew the relatives of three Catholic women who lived well into into their nineties who had never used unnatural birthcontrol. One I was related to my marriage, and she almost lived to be a hundred years old — about 98.

Posted Monday, February 27, 2012 3:23 PM By Anne T.
Excuse me, that should be “by marriage” in my last post. I am not going to correct anyone typos in my previous posts as they can be figured out.

Posted Monday, February 27, 2012 4:33 PM By Dana
Are you a OBGYN Jon? Are you a woman? Have you seriously studied the alternatives to birth control pills and read the information about the hazards of contraception? Did you ever wonder why so many women have to have abortions when they’re already on birth control pills? Yes, Jon, the majority of abortions are done on women already taking the pill! Hmmm. Maybe you try learning from others and spend more time in contemplation and silence. I’ve just ordered the dvd “Into Great Silence” for my lenten retreat at home. Knowing everything and not listening to others has always been my besetting sin too. I pray for greater humility and if I see improvement, I get all puffed up. ha

Posted Monday, February 27, 2012 4:33 PM By JLS
There is no such thing as “free” sex. What it refers to is a commodity, bought and sold in the market place. One reason so many gays attack true marriage is because they cannot buy and sell it, which is what they are attempting to do by artificing this “gay marriage” abomination.

Posted Tuesday, February 28, 2012 12:47 AM By JonJ
Tracy, the whole reasons for my post wasn’t “pill advocacy”. Its just that I saw quite a few factual errors. If you are going to attack use of the pill, you should do so with correct factual information. If you are attempting to persuade individuals away from contraception, incorrect or hyperbolic attacks undermine your, and the church’s, credibility if these errors are discovered. I was trying my best to provide “unslanted information”; but the context of “refutation” makes it look like an “advocacy” postition. If you notice, I very carefully included the data needed to provide accurate warnings about the pill. Now, you misread the risk analysis portion (I understand that this is not a particularly familiar technical area, and this venue isn’t the best for writing clarity on my part). The 124/100,0000 rate is the overall rate for the general population. The added risk from OC’s, I roughly estimated at another 25-30/100,000 rate (based on the studies I read). That translates to around a 3% increased risk of contracting breast cancer during a woman’s lifetime. Since the survival rate for breast cancer is 70%, the mortality risk caused by OC use before first pregnancy is slightly less than 1%. Now, 3% is a small risk, BUT any good poker player will have numerous “bad beat” stories where an unskilled player hit a 4% draw, causing him to lose a painfully large pot. And that’s just money. Having cancer is a far more harrowing event than losing even a relatively large amount of money in a poker game. Pharmacuedicals always have side effects, many of which are not known until years later–even for FDA approved drugs. You should not take them lightly, just as a general rule. In fact, this analysis should call into question the practice of allowing minors to receive OC prescriptions, since evaluating a small risk with severe consequences is probably very difficult for a teenage mind.

Posted Tuesday, February 28, 2012 1:49 AM By JonJ
Tracy, another reason why your statements “twigged” me, was that you leveled a general attack against “the medical establishment”. “The medical establishment” isn’t a monolithic entity with a single coherent money interest. Even restricting ourselves to pure financial self interest analysis, you still have multiple conflicting interests. With respect to OC’s, certainly planned parenthood and big pharma have interests in selling their goods and services; but OB-GYN’s, pediatricians, and pediatric subspecialties would make far bigger profits from more babies. And, the statements on the website you cited about the medical establishment “hiding information available since the 80’s” from patients and doctors really set my teeth on edge, because as I read through the literature, I realized I’d had sort of a “fly on the wall” seat to how this whole drama played out–and I know that characterization is a very bad distortion. You see, my father was a gastroenterologist and ran his own medical conference. In the late 80’s and early nineties, I was a biology student, and performed numerous admin tasks for my father’s conference. And, at the end, my dad would let me watch as he did a conference “post mort” with the speakers to try to review their performance. Consquently, I heard a lot of cross talk about medical issues and policy from academic physicians at the top of their field. Now, the issue you’re talking about is part of a very big controversy that played out from the late 80’s through 2002, and I heard a lot about it in lectures at my dad’s medical conference. The OC story is really part of the hormone replacement therapy (HRT) trend of the 80’s and 90’s. In the late 80’s you started hearing about a number of preliminary studies that showed hormone therapy reduced risks of cervical and endometrial cancer in post menopausal women. (OC’s use the same hormones as HRT). The medical community sort of grabbed onto these studies a bit too quickly, and started prescribing HRT

Posted Tuesday, February 28, 2012 2:19 AM By JonJ
(HRT/OC cont), Now, the medical community has debated why they jumped on this trend. Part of the story is that the patients themselves liked some of the secondary effects of HRT, which was to maintain a more youthful appearance and to quell many of the uncomfortable aspects of menopause. Later. contradictory studies began to trickle in, that suggested HRT increased breast and cervical cancer. (ugg, just realized I mistyped and wrote that HRT reduced cervical cancer instead of ovary cancer earlier.). That touched off a series of rather intense debates whether HRT was detrimental or beneficial to post menopausal women’s health. Remember, at this time the data was murky because doing a definitive study would be very expensive in terms of both money and time. As a rule of thumb, you need at least 1,000 cases for a good study (to suppress statisical variance). You also need a randomized sample. To get 1000 randomized cases of breast cancer you need to track either 1) 1 million patients over a year or 2) 100,000 patients over 10 years. I hope you can understand that was quite a logistical challenge, especially in pre-internet days. Consequently, the academic debates were quite intense, and involved a lot of theory. (I saw Ivy league medical school professors going at it hammer and tongs over multiple years). The debate ended in (i believe) 2002, when they finally completed a massive (with thousands of cases of multiple cancer types) and determined that HRT therapy was detrimental to women’s health on balance (but could be beneficial if the patient has a dangerous family history of certain cancer types). Not once over these years did I hear ANY mention of “profit” “money” or benefit to the medical profession. Nor was big pharma able to “hide” this information from “busy doctors”. Any half bright doctor that spent more than 10 waking minutes at a medical conference would have heard about it. Obviously, once HRT was called into question, that would raise questions about OC.

Posted Tuesday, February 28, 2012 3:24 AM By JonJ
(HRT/OC cont). I didn’t get to observe much about the OC story, but read about it in the papers cited on the site Tracy referred to me. The reason why physicians said that OC’s were “safe” was because the original studies showed them to be. The articles indicated something interesting, that pregnancy before 24 tends to make breast tissue “mature” and become cancer resistant. And, before pregnancy, that 70% percent of breast tissue is in an “unformed” state that is prone to develop cancer. I haven’t had the time to dig into these studies, but I believe these are still preliminary and thus are still subject to the problems of small sample sizes and variance (I hope the HRT tale tells you some of the problems of relying on early studies). This combined with the HRT debate in the 80’s and 90’s, goes a long way to explaining why the medical community didn’t become generally aware of OC breast cancer risks until relatively recently. The OC users of the 60’s and 70’s were generally women who had already married and had children; thus their breasts had already become cancer resistant. But, social behavior changes led younger women to use OC’s before first pregnancy. And, since breast cancer typically doesn’t show up until a woman is past 50, it would take awhile before researchers began to recognize the link. Now, as I mentioned before, I work for a startup health care information technology company (we provide electronic medical records, billing, and practice management software for doctors and hospitals). I am one of the company founders. If we succeed, we will become part of the “medical establishment”. I hope you can understand that you launched an attack (at least vicariously) against me and mine. If you are going to make the case that the entire medical establishment has intentionally conspired to kill and maim millions of women for profit, I do not think it is unreasonable to expect that you do so using accurate information.

Posted Tuesday, February 28, 2012 12:06 PM By Dana
Jon’s response reminds me of Mr.Collins letter to Mr. Bennett in Pride & Prejudice. ‘It is very long”, said Kitty in its praise. Good luck in your business venture, Jon! I support the Acton Institute’s good work in helping small business ventures and the importance of providing work and hope to those with none. Well done!

Posted Tuesday, February 28, 2012 4:27 PM By Anne T.
Jon J, doctors make mistakes. Sometimes the MAJORITY of doctors make mistakes. The one’s who told us we should be bottle feeding our children in this country made a mistake. Now they are telling, even working women, to nurse their children or at least to pump the milk and save it to feed the child. Some of my relatives have breast feed and pumped after the year 2000. One of them was and is now the sole support of her family from the time they had their last son. Her husband was laid off, and she was the one with the masters degree. Luckily she had time accrued to take off for the birth of her son. Thank God. It is better for the child’s immune system, among other things and also for the mother. It provides a natural form of birthcontrol while the mother is breast feeding, too. As the old saying goes, “if you do not use it, you lose it.” We need to go back to more natural ways, and I believe it is best for mothers to stay home if they can most of the time when children are very young. It is also better for the marriage. How many men have had affairs with the live in nanny? To put it bluntly. Jon J, you are wrong on many things.

Posted Tuesday, February 28, 2012 5:08 PM By Anne T.
Jon J, I did not mean to imply that all doctors deliberately fool their patients for profit, but many of them have made some bad mistakes, and many pro-life doctors tried to tell them about the dangers of the Pill and other procedures but they chose to continue to experiment on women. When I was very young my tonsils got infected now and then. Most doctors took out tonsils as the usual, common procedure and thought they were not needed for much. My grandmother refused to let the doctor take mine out. Perhaps she had read something that made her leary of letting the doctor do it. Not until somewhere in the late 20th Century, after the Polio vacine had been out for years and years, scientists found out that children who had their tonsils back when I was young and were exposed to Polio, either did not get it at all or got milder cases. I most likely was exposed to Polio back then and never got it. I had my tonsils. As I said, some doctors do make mistakes, but there are others who try to profit from certain things, such as abortions and drugs, and if you are the one who suffers from their mistakes or profiteering, it does not make you too happy. According to the physicians that Judy Brown of the American Life League uses, they are better ways than the birthcontrol pill for medical problems, including regulating one’s period.

Posted Wednesday, February 29, 2012 7:40 PM By Tracy
JonJ, I thank you for evaluating the ABC Link web site. When I was making an attack against the “medical establishment” as you suggest, I was referring to the various professional organizations which represent various specialties in medicine. I pointed out that the American Pharmacist Association was the only major medical association to stand up for it’s professional’s conscientious rights. I’m not sure if you don’t believe this or if that wasn’t such a big deal for you. Let me give one example, It is well known that pro-life ObGyn’s are under attack from within their professional. They are told that one of their professional duties would be to provide abortion/contraception. Prenatal testing is being pushed as a responsible and necessary test to detect birth defects. As sad as it is, detecting these babies and aborting them is now considered standard responsible medical care. AAPLOG is a pro-life ObGyn organization but has few members and the media does not positively report their expert opinions. You stated that you provide IT for physicians now. I’m sure you are aware of the concern some have about EMR’s and the government having access to them along with universal health care. I am not sure of your political persuasion, but if you are a Democrat then you would most likely tend toward believing that our government would surly desire the best for it’s citizens. You would also tend to believe that most “professionals’ would tend to be ethical. As a Republican I can see how big government limits the freedom of its citizens, which necessarily leads to human rights violation. I also do not subscribe to the belief that being a “professional” means one is ethical. There is too much evidence out there that this just isn’t so.

Posted Saturday, March 24, 2012 2:46 PM By Walter B. Severs
I accidently came across this blog and was pleased to note that there are some capital C Catholics in SF. As a co-author of both meta-analyses linking induced abortion (J. Epidemiol. Comm. Health, 1996) and oral contraceptives (Mayo Clinic Proc. 2006) to breast cancer, I would like to note that research done subsequently to these studies further support the conclusions. Both abortion and oral contraceptives measureably increase risk associated with this disease! In order to alleviate any confusion in prior postings, I also would note that oral contraceptives likely fail to prevent ovulation about 12% of the time, and the hormones clearly render the uterus incapable of nidation (the process of a fertilized egg attatching to the uterus). Regarding the effectiveness of the “functioning” of Catholic Bishops, Judie Brown’s book, The Broken Path, can be easily recommended.