Technology makes sin safe. . .

There was a time when the choice to have a child was the default and it was the exception to choose otherwise.  Of course, we all know that this has been reversed.  The default has become not to have children and the exception to have children.  While this is surely due to the values which have changed and the desire on the part of people, it is not solely due to these.  Key to this is access to cheap, reliable, readily available, and relatively safe means to accomplish this birth control and rid the mother of a child she does not want.  We should not minimize the effect of the technology upon everything.  

There are countless examples of technology serving to influence and even define the boundaries of right and wrong and the limits of acceptable behavior.  Indeed, that is one of the unintended consequences of technology -- it sometimes establishes norms even without the discussion or even consent of people.  That is especially true of matters of sex and gender.  If it were more difficult to prevent pregnancy or that imposed a difficult burden upon the couple or it was costly to obtain, birth control would surely be less prevalent than it is today.  If it were more difficult to end a pregnancy and there was no pill available to cast the unwanted child from the womb, the numbers of abortions would be smaller.  Technology has decided this for us and most folks follow along like mindless sheep to the slaughter.

What I fear is that technology is leading us to go too quickly where we have not even decided to go.  I can well recall when the mantra of those opposed to abortion chanted safe, legal, and rare.  We do not seem to be that concerned about the last part of that slogan.  Indeed, we seem not to even care how many children are killed in the womb so long as it is cheap, reliable, readily available, and relatively safe to end the life of the unborn.  When technology gets ahead of our reasonable deliberation on such things, we tend to end up where we had not planned to go.  When, in 1930, the Anglican Communion opened the door to birth control, who would have foreseen that within one hundred years marriage would become a more optional choice for people and children even less optional?  Who could have foreseen that whole sections of the civilized world would literally be in population decline as the birth rate declined to a rate in which we are not even replacing ourselves but shrinking?

The wisdom of St. Paul ought to prevail.  Things possible are not necessarily beneficial.  As I have spoken of before, the sexual revolution left our primary institutions in shatters with home and family trying desperately to keep up but lacking behind.  Liberty became its own end and was no longer tied to the desire to live freely responsible and upright lives.  We learned simply to live and to live primarily for ourselves.  Maybe it is time to reconsider the regularity of birth control and the normalcy of abortion.  Maybe now is the time for the Church to teach the faithful and those on the fringes of the church's life that what became normal to us (non-married and largely childless lives for those who are married).  Maybe it is time to admit that we were not ourselves and spoke in haste, enamored as we were with the setting as well as the numbers of those who inhabit that setting.  Will we continue to simply follow the judgment of the moment in deciding what is good, right, and salutary, or will we learn to speak to our family the values that undergird the fabric of our lives?

In one sense I might be saying that technology can tell us something is right and, even though it is wrong, it remains an enticement to us simply because we like being told what we want is right.  That is certainly the problem inherent with the problem of marriage and children becoming optional while sexual relations outside of marriage with the normal expectation of preventing a pregnancy and the assurance that if it was not prevented, it could be easily, cheaply, and safely eliminated.  Technology can make us think that sin, at least sexual sins, are normal and safe.  That is Satan's lie in Eden repeated again and again and again.