Idea for a TeeShirt

After reading some of the excellent articles at CERC, I decided it would say:

"Save the World: Practice Catholicism"

Because there are so many ills that could be healed/reversed/avoided if people actually listened to the church's teachings. She doesn't say these things for no apparent reason. According to this article, the reasons are apparent even to secular humanists who aren't trying to save souls, such as George Akerlof:

George Akerlof is a Nobel prize-winning economist, a professor at Berkeley, and a former fellow at the Brookings Institution; he is not a conservative. In two articles in leading economic journals, Akerlof details findings and advances arguments that vindicate Paul VI's prophetic warnings about the social consequences of contraception for morality and men.

In his first article, published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 1996, Akerlof began by asking why the United States witnessed such a dramatic increase in illegitimacy from 1965 to 1990 — from 24 percent to 64 percent among African-Americans, and from 3 percent to 18 percent among whites. He noted that public health advocates had predicted that the widespread availability of contraception and abortion would reduce illegitimacy, not increase it. So what happened?

Using the language of economics, Akerlof pointed out that "technological innovation creates both winners and losers." In this case the introduction of widespread effective contraception — especially the pill — put traditional women with an interest in marriage and children at "competitive disadvantage" in the relationship "market" compared to modern women who took a more hedonistic approach to sex and relationships. The contraceptive revolution also reduced the costs of sex for women and men, insofar as the threat of childbearing was taken off the table, especially as abortion became widely available in the 1970s.

The consequence? Traditional women could no longer hold the threat of pregnancy over their male partners, either to avoid sex or to elicit a promise of marriage in the event their partner made them pregnant. And modern women no longer worried about getting pregnant. Accordingly, more and more women (traditional as well as modern) gave in to their boyfriends' entreaties for sex.

In Akerlof's words, "the norm of premarital sexual abstinence all but vanished in the wake of the technology shock." Women felt free or obligated to have sex before marriage. For instance, Akerlof finds that the percentage of girls 16 and under reporting sexual activity surged in 1970 and 1971 as contraception and abortion became common in many states throughout the country.

I also considered starting a Society of Pope Paul VI (SPPVI-- a kind of antidote to the SPPX) before I realized that such a Society already exists. It's called the Catholic Church...And hey-- I'm already a member!

A second article that makes manifest the apparent soundness of Catholic practice examines the inherently human need to be absolved of sin, as evidenced in the way online confessionals have become so popular. Human beings have an innate need to voice aloud their guilt. Jesus understood this fact, and instituted the Sacrament of CPR as a means of Healing.

I give thanks to God that I am in the Church that saves people from themselves, that saves society, that teaches Truth (about Divorce, about Sexuality, about Jesus, etc.), and does so in the name of Love Incarnate.

I'm inclined to break into merry song:

I am a C.
I am a C-H.
I am a C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N! (yeehaw!)
And I have C-H-R-I-S-T in my H-E-A-R-T
Whom I will L-O-V-E- E-T-E-R-N-A-L-L-Y!