In the 5th Century A.D., a heresy in the Christian Church called Pelagianism took form. Essentially, it taught that man was not burdened by original sin and could attain forgiveness and lead the life he chose with no assistance or grace from God. In other words, man fully controlled his own destiny in all facets of his life; there was no real need for a higher power or calling or redemptive grace. Man controlled everything in his midst.
That heresy was put down in the Christian Church by St. Augustine, but in many ways, it continues to this day in our own society. The advent of technological and medical wonders combined with the modernists’ emphasis on the autonomy of the self, men and women as never before think they are fully in control of all facets of society, to the point that many now believe we can not only determine when life begins and when it ends, but who lives and who dies. And this “faith in man” has been bolstered by what what might be called “ Roeism.”
When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a woman, or for that matter, a physician or politician or bureaucrat, could determine when a life begins and ends, our society set down a path that today’s culture now fully and willingly travels, if not embraces.
And the results of this journey are all around us. Unborn infants who can feel pain and are literally weeks from birth are killed in the womb in the most brutal manners possible—by medical acts even the Nazis or Stalinist Russians would not fully adopt in the mid-20th century. Young people and mentally unbalanced individuals heartlessly kill innocents for no other reason than a desire to do so. Homeless men are beaten to death or set on fire by teenagers who did not grow up believing in the dignity of every human life. Young girls are sold and bought into sexual slavery because of a society committed to the autonomy of the individual and the pursuit of pleasure and comfort, even if it dehumanizes another person.