CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) - These are incredibly fast-paced times we’re living in, and nothing is accelerating more rapidly than the moral decay of our country. It seems like a bullet train headed straight down, and the bitter truth is, it’s the train we designed and built. We’re only reaping the destruction we’ve sown for so long. There a multitude of specific sins we’ve sown that reap destruction, but I believe the one that underlies them all is our desecration of sex and human life through abortion. This sin contributes more than any other to our speedy descent into turmoil.

It’s the origin of so many of our troubles because it is our origin. We were made to be holy, and the gift of conjugal love that creates new life is meant to be holy and cherished, and the more we trample and twist and abuse and distort that gift for a sinful and selfish purpose, the deeper we sow the seed that reaps only death. The roots sink lower and spread wider and grow larger and more difficult to pull out. The destruction spreads throughout every area of our lives because the sin is sown so deeply into our “soil.”

Where sex and babies are concerned, it seems we’ve lost even the slightest inclination to aspire to the better angels of our nature. Today respect, responsibility, nobility, generosity, decency, trust, sacrifice, and love are discarded in favor of individual “freedom” and “choice.” Why bother practicing self-control, why bother treating the opposite sex with respect and behaving with honor, when one can just eliminate any unintended “punishments” and carry on as though no one was hurt and nothing was lost.

Men are being reduced to simply their DNA (and only when that’s needed), women are further reduced to objects used for bodily satisfaction, and sex is devoid of love, emptied of obligation, and cheapened as a merely animalistic activity. Then when a child is created but not wanted, our solution is violence.

We sow violence, and violence begets more violence, and more death, and now no one is safe. No human life at any stage in any condition is safe because brutality is rooted in the soil where we all begin. If human life isn’t protected at every stage, it can’t really be protected at any stage because sooner or later, someone somewhere will rationalize and justify their “choice” to kill another person. “She is too disabled…” “He is old and very sick…” “She won’t have the quality of life she should have…” “His medical care will be too expensive…” “He has a terminal disease anyway…” “I just don’t want to be pregnant…”

It is this simple: Life is either sacred or it’s not. If life is not sacred from the moment of conception until natural death then all of our lives are at the mercy of someone else’s whim and choice. Our nation’s (and the world’s) unwillingness to acknowledge that all human life is sacred has crumbled the foundation we all stand on, and don’t look now, but the ground is sinking beneath us.

Consider these recent events: a young woman decides to kill her full-term baby the day before delivery by shooting herself in the abdomen, and a court decides no crime was committed. The baby’s death, or rather, execution, meant nothing.

Another woman induces the abortion of her own grandson and when he is delivered still alive, she finishes the job by bagging him in plastic and throwing him out with the trash. This depravity results not in a murder charge, but a charge of “improperly disposing of human remains.” Human remains? A baby boy was born alive and suffocated to death in a plastic bag! He wasn’t “human remains.” He was a child, and he was murdered by his own grandmother.

Recall how a few years ago the world watched as two parents tried desperately to save their daughter from being starved to death, but they were left powerless to stop her murder. Terri was unable to speak for herself, and so her right to live was left up to an unfaithful husband who had made himself a new life with another woman. He and a group of doctors deemed it completely appropriate to starve Terri to death, despite the fact that her family wanted and begged to be allowed to care for her. She was loved by many, and yet ONE person had total authority over her life, and thus, she was killed. And amazingly, many, many people saw nothing wrong with it.

All this is evidence of grossly warped morality and a very sick society. Those are grotesquely twisted values. It means that only human persons who are useful, productive, and not inconveniencing anyone else are fit to live. A life too burdensome or unwanted can be snuffed out or cruelly butchered, whatever it takes.

Just remember: If they’ll do it with you, they’ll do it to you. Someday, you might not be so “useful” anymore. Someday, your body might be permanently injured. Is it alright with you if someone else decides to ...