A third time he returned to Ravenna. Again he was captured, hacked with knives, had scalding water poured over his wounds, was beaten in the mouth with stones because he persisted in preaching, and then, loaded with chains, was flung into a horrible dungeon to starve to death;
…
Apollinaris was kept concealed for some time, but as he was passing out of the gates of the city, was set upon and savagely beaten, probably at Classis, a suburb, but he lived for seven days…
From Catholic Encyclopaedia, linked in ‘The Fury of the Pagans’ at fathersofthechurch.com

This is what the old pagans were like. Enraged by the preaching of the truth, they were possessed of a murderous fury and sought to destroy Christ’s followers with great cruelty and brutality.

We have an exact match for them in our time; the followers of the many cults of godless Materialism. They think and behave the same. They consider themselves sophisticated and enlightened, just as the citizens of Greece and Rome did, but the brutality committed by these cults, most obviously Socialism, perfectly corresponds to (and often vastly exceeds) the savagery of the idolators of the ancient world.

These are the pagans of our time, the enemies of God and Truth. Throughout the world, and the last several centuries, these cults have gone by many names. But in our time the most common are; Socialists, Feminists and Greens.

The Earth Worshipers want to define humans as a plague, the Darwinists want to define us as beasts, the Eugenicists want to eliminate the weak among us as if we were livestock, the Feminists want to break down family bonds and the Socialists to rebuild us all as New Socialist Man.

They hate God and they hate God’s followers. They can’t imprison, torture and murder Christians here as their ideological brethren do in China and North Korea. But they are nevertheless possessed by fury and hatred by the preaching of Christ’s truth. They oppose the truth at every turn, and devise strategies for the spreading of lies — the favourite strategy, just as it was in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, being the indoctrination of the young.

We shouldn’t blame them. Their ideas have led them into the arms of the great deceiver and the great seducer. And we shouldn’t fear them. The Paganism of Rome and Greece was overthrown by Christian truth, and the same will happen in our time.

However, we most definitely should not be seduced ourselves by these destructive cults.

One thing I’ve noticed recently, is Christians who will imply the great philosophies of the East are a form of Paganism that must be rejected, and yet they embrace the beliefs of the actual pagan cults right here among us. They lift Feminist, Green and Socialist idols onto the alter of Christ and into first place in their hearts.

Now, I don’t much understand the relationship between the Eastern philosophies — Confuncianism and Buddhism in particular — and God, but I know these great philosophies don’t support the death-dealing beliefs of the pagan cults. And I know the eternal enemy knows and fears God’s truth, And under the Socialist tyrannies of Asia, Buddhism is persecuted as aggressively as Christianity.

Christ commanded us to be guileless like little children, to judge the tree by its fruit. ‘Those who have eyes, let them see,’ he said. We must see things as they are, not as words would make them.

To condemn the followers of a noble truth-seeking philosophy — like Buddhism — because we call it by the name of religion, and yet to embrace an evil cult — such as Socialism or Feminism — because we call it by the name of science or philosophy, is not to see real things as they really are, but to be blinded by logical illusions of our own creation.

This is how some people see IVF.

I think the author is right on target. Children (when not being seen as inconvenient to the operation of a career) are now products, consumer goods that you want right up there with a Lexus and a Blackberry.
…
a huge medical industry dedicated to producing children for those with the resources and not the natural fertility
…
the child is something of an accessory to fame and fortune, like a private jet.

This attitude is prevalent in certain circles. You can find a lot of it if you browse around the Touchstone web site, for example. I just happened to make a note of this comment because I was so outraged by it — so much ignorance, cruelty and spite packed into a few short lines. I feel like saying a lot of things when I read such remarks, but I’ll look past the sarcasm and restrict myself to debating what I think is the underlying point the commentor is trying to make.

People talk a lot about the ‘right to reproduction’. Some Catholic writers describe it in the same terms as modern ‘rights of entitlement’, rather than a traditional ‘negative’ right.

The difference in these two types of rights are as follows: a right of entitlement, is something someone must provide you, but ‘negative’ rights concern things you have no right to do to me.

Negative rights are all basically to do with freedom. For example the right to free speech is a negative right (you have no right to prevent me from speaking), as is the right to free enterprise (barring illegal acts you have no right to tell me how I may make a living). The right to health care and education, however, are examples of ‘rights of entitlement’. Conservatives generally regard ‘rights of entitlement’ as lesser rights than a ‘negative’ rights. Some Libertarians (and I am not one of those) even think the whole concept of rights of entitlement is unsound, and even that such rights are fraudulent.

Of course, most people believe (as do I) that, assuming a society can afford it (as ours undoubtedly can), it ought to provide a certain reasonable minimum level of services like education and health care to those who would otherwise lack them. Likewise, even ‘negative’ rights may be curtailed if society can not afford to maintain them. For example a society like ours, being flooded with pornography, should not grant the right of free expression to smut peddlers. Allowing free speech to such an extreme degree is simply not worth the massive damage it causes.

But I digress, I was talking about IVF and I had an important point to make.

Listen!

The important point in this debate, however, that so many Catholic thinkers are getting wrong is that reproductive rights are not an ‘entitlement’, but a good old fashioned ‘negative’ right. It’s not that I and my wife have an ‘entitlement’ to reproduce, it’s that you have no right to try and stop us.