On Thu, 12 May 2005 22:49:42 -0700,

In article <ij7881p1uughe0mdt6f16blgb72iepfh9k@4ax.com>, Alan W. Craft
<mauritius4@hotmail.com> wrote:

<snip>

The Sodomite men were simply hunting for some fresh male hiney,
blinded for their trouble, then later destroyed altogether.

• Alan has such a way with words.

Why, thank you, Measures.
I do endeavor to be eloquent.

On Thu, 12 May 2005 22:49:42 -0700,

In article <ij7881p1uughe0mdt6f16blgb72iepfh9k@4ax.com>, Alan W. Craft
<mauritius4@hotmail.com> wrote:

<snip>

The Sodomite men were simply hunting for some fresh male hiney,
blinded for their trouble, then later destroyed altogether.

• Alan has such a way with words.

Why, thank you, Measures.

I do endeavor to be eloquent.

On Thu, 12 May 2005 05:48:13 -0700,

In article <q10681lsoeshbmugc00c1b22jumkrvoebj@4ax.com>, Alan W. Craft
<mauritius4@hotmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, 12 May 2005 00:13:03 +0100, Pat Winstanley

<boredofspam2004@yahoo.co.uk> emanated:

In article <p3h481tqpt5ald363a0funq164mtnbmh4u@4ax.com>, mauritius4
@hotmail.com says...

• Indeed. Approximately 5 of my mother's pregnancies were seemingly
terminated by an act of God.

Thus, no murders took place.

Except by the god?

The term [murder] applies only to creatures, not the Creator.

• So the male homos at Sodom and Gomorrah were not murdered when the
Creator crispy-critted them?

Of course not.

They were...recalled, to put it mildly.

• R. L. Measures wrote:

** Pat -- In the minds of those who were religiously "educated" by

infallible Romsn church between the ages of c. 4 and 7, at the very
instant a sperm enters an egg, a micro-miniature"baby" marterializes -
complete with soul - that has a fully-formed cranial valt complete with
fully-formed brain. Arguing the real world with True Believer Caholics

as hopeless as shoveling sand against against a tsunami. The laugher

that Pope Gregory XIII determined that ensoulment takes place on the

day and not at conception, so abortion was okay up to the 40th day.

"In matters of faith never trust your own judgment, but always humbly
submit to the decisions of the Holy Church."
(page 77, *A Full Catechism of the Catholic Religion*, Fr. Joseph De
Harbe, S.J.)

The Catholic Church has always condemned abortion as a grave evil.

Christian writers from the first-century author of the Didache to Pope
John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae ("The Gospel of Life")
have maintained that the Bible forbids abortion, just as it forbids
murder. This tract will provide some examples of this consistent witness
from the writings of the Fathers of the Church.

As the early Christian writer Tertullian pointed out, the law of Moses
ordered strict penalties for causing an abortion. We read, "If men who
are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely
[Hebrew: "so that her child comes out"], but there is no serious injury,
the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the
court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for
life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (Ex.
21:22–24).

This applies the lex talionis or "law of retribution" to abortion. The
lex talionis establishes the just punishment for an injury (eye for eye,
tooth for tooth, life for life, compared to the much greater
retributions that had been common before, such as life for eye, life for
tooth, lives of the offender’s family for one life).

The lex talionis would already have been applied to a woman who was
injured in a fight.

pregnant woman is hurt "so that her child comes out"; the child is the
focus of the lex talionis in this passage. Aborted babies must have
justice, too.

The Catholic Church has always condemned abortion as a grave evil.

• R. L. Measures wrote:

** Pat -- In the minds of those who were religiously "educated" by the
infallible Romsn church between the ages of c. 4 and 7, at the very
instant a sperm enters an egg, a micro-miniature"baby" marterializes -
complete with soul - that has a fully-formed cranial valt complete with
fully-formed brain. Arguing the real world with True Believer Caholics is
as hopeless as shoveling sand against against a tsunami. The laugher is
that Pope Gregory XIII determined that ensoulment takes place on the 40th
day and not at conception, so abortion was okay up to the 40th day.

"In matters of faith never trust your own judgment, but always humbly
submit to the decisions of the Holy Church."
(page 77, *A Full Catechism of the Catholic Religion*, Fr. Joseph De
Harbe, S.J.)

The Catholic Church has always condemned abortion as a grave evil.

Christian writers from the first-century author of the Didache to Pope
John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae ("The Gospel of Life")
have maintained that the Bible forbids abortion, just as it forbids
murder. This tract will provide some examples of this consistent witness
from the writings of the Fathers of the Church.

As the early Christian writer Tertullian pointed out, the law of Moses
ordered strict penalties for causing an abortion. We read, "If men who
are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely
[Hebrew: "so that her child comes out"], but there is no serious injury,
the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the
court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for
life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (Ex.
21:22–24).

This applies the lex talionis or "law of retribution" to abortion. The
lex talionis establishes the just punishment for an injury (eye for eye,
tooth for tooth, life for life, compared to the much greater
retributions that had been common before, such as life for eye, life for
tooth, lives of the offender’s family for one life).

The lex talionis would already have been applied to a woman who was
injured in a fight. The distinguishing point in this passage is that a
pregnant woman is hurt "so that her child comes out"; the child is the
focus of the lex talionis in this passage. Aborted babies must have
justice, too.

This is because they, like older children, have souls, even though
marred by original sin. David tells us, "Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me" (Ps. 51:5, NIV). Since
sinfulness is a spiritual rather than a physical condition, David must
have had a spiritual nature from the time of conception.

The same is shown in James 2:26, which tells us that "the body without
the spirit is dead": The soul is the life-principle of the human body.
Since from the time of conception the child’s body is alive (as shown by
the fact it is growing), the child’s body must already have its spirit.

Thus, in 1995 Pope John Paul II declared that the Church’s teaching on
abortion "is unchanged and unchangeable. Therefore, by the authority
which Christ conferred upon Peter and his successors . . . I declare
that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means,
always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate
killing of an innocent human being. This doctrine is based upon the
natural law and upon the written word of God, is transmitted by the
Church’s tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium.
No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an
act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the law of
God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself,
and proclaimed by the Church" (Evangelium Vitae 62).

The early Church Fathers agreed. Fortunately, abortion, like all sins,
is forgivable; and forgiveness is as close as the nearest confessional.



The Didache


"The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder. You shall
not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit
fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic. You
shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy
a newborn child" (Didache 2:1–2 [A.D. 70]).



The Letter of Barnabas


"The way of light, then, is as follows. If anyone desires to travel to
the appointed place, he must be zealous in his works. The knowledge,
therefore, which is given to us for the purpose of walking in this way,
is the following. . . . Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring
abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born" (Letter of
Barnabas 19 [A.D. 74]).



The Apocalypse of Peter


"And near that place I saw another strait place . . . and there sat
women. . . . And over against them many children who were born to them
out of due time sat crying. And there came forth from them rays of fire
and smote the women in the eyes. And these were the accursed who
conceived and caused abortion" (The Apocalypse of Peter 25 [A.D. 137]).



Athenagoras


"What man of sound mind, therefore, will affirm, while such is our
character, that we are murderers?
. . . [W]hen we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion
commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion,
on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the
same person to regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and
therefore an object of God’s care, and when it has passed into life, to
kill it; and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are
chargeable with child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been
reared to destroy it" (A Plea for the Christians 35 [A.D. 177]).



Tertullian


"In our case, a murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy
even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood
from the other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth
is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take
away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That
is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its
seed" (Apology 9:8 [A.D. 197]).

"Among surgeons’ tools there is a certain instrument, which is formed
with a nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the uterus first of
all and keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular blade,
by means of which the limbs [of the child] within the womb are dissected
with anxious but unfaltering care; its last appendage being a blunted or
covered hook, wherewith the entire fetus is extracted by a violent delivery.

"There is also [another instrument in the shape of] a copper needle or
spike, by which the actual death is managed in this furtive robbery of
life: They give it, from its infanticide function, the name of
embruosphaktes, [meaning] "the slayer of the infant," which of course
was alive. . . .

"[The doctors who performed abortions] all knew well enough that a
living being had been conceived, and [they] pitied this most luckless
infant state, which had first to be put to death, to escape being
tortured alive" (The Soul 25 [A.D. 210]).

"Now we allow that life begins with conception because we contend that
the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at
the same moment and place that the soul does" (ibid., 27).

"The law of Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties the man who shall
cause abortion [Ex. 21:22–24]" (ibid., 37).



Minucius Felix


"There are some [pagan] women who, by drinking medical preparations,
extinguish the source of the future man in their very bowels and thus
commit a parricide before they bring forth. And these things assuredly
come down from the teaching of your [false] gods. . . . To us
[Christians] it is not lawful either to see or hear of homicide"
(Octavius 30 [A.D. 226]).



Hippolytus


"Women who were reputed to be believers began to take drugs to render
themselves sterile, and to bind themselves tightly so as to expel what
was being conceived, since they would not, on account of relatives and
excess wealth, want to have a child by a slave or by any insignificant
person. See, then, into what great impiety that lawless one has
proceeded, by teaching adultery and murder at the same time!"
(Refutation of All Heresies [A.D. 228]).



Council of Ancyra


"Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that which they
have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a
former decree excluded them until the hour of death, and to this some
have assented. Nevertheless, being desirous to use somewhat greater
lenity, we have ordained that they fulfill ten years [of penance],
according to the prescribed degrees" (canon 21 [A.D. 314]).



Basil the Great


"Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years’ penance, whether the
embryo were perfectly formed, or not" (First Canonical Letter, canon 2
[A.D. 374]).

"He that kills another with a sword, or hurls an axe at his own wife and
kills her, is guilty of willful murder; not he who throws a stone at a
dog, and unintentionally kills a man, or who corrects one with a rod, or
scourge, in order to reform him, or who kills a man in his own defense,
when he only designed to hurt him. But the man, or woman, is a murderer
that gives a philtrum, if the man that takes it dies upon it; so are
they who take medicines to procure abortion; and so are they who kill on
the highway, and rapparees" (ibid., canon 8).



John Chrysostom


"Wherefore I beseech you, flee fornication. . . . Why sow where the
ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit?—where there are many
efforts at abortion?—where there is murder before the birth? For even
the harlot you do not let continue a mere harlot, but make her a
murderess also. You see how drunkenness leads to prostitution,
prostitution to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather to a something
even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not
take off the thing born, but prevents its being born. Why then do thou
abuse the gift of God, and fight with his laws, and follow after what is
a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber
for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto
slaughter? For with a view to drawing more money by being agreeable and
an object of longing to her lovers, even this she is not backward to do,
so heaping upon thy head a great pile of fire. For even if the daring
deed be hers, yet the causing of it is thine" (Homilies on Romans 24
[A.D. 391]).



Jerome


"I cannot bring myself to speak of the many virgins who daily fall and
are lost to the bosom of the Church, their mother. . . . Some go so far
as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder
human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find
themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion,
and when, as often happens, they die with their offspring, they enter
the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ
but also of suicide and child murder" (Letters 22:13 [A.D. 396]).



The Apostolic Constitutions


"Thou shalt not use magic. Thou shalt not use witchcraft; for he says,
‘You shall not suffer a witch to live’ [Ex. 22:18]. Thou shall not slay
thy child by causing abortion, nor kill that which is begotten. . . .
[I]f it be slain, [it] shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed"
(Apostolic Constitutions 7:3 [A.D. 400]).

€ R. L. Measures wrote:

** Pat -- In the minds of those who were religiously "educated" by the
infallible Romsn church between the ages of c. 4 and 7, at the very
instant a sperm enters an egg, a micro-miniature"baby" marterializes -
complete with soul - that has a fully-formed cranial valt complete with
fully-formed brain. Arguing the real world with True Believer Caholics is
as hopeless as shoveling sand against against a tsunami. The laugher is
that Pope Gregory XIII determined that ensoulment takes place on the 40th
day and not at conception, so abortion was okay up to the 40th day.

"In matters of faith never trust your own judgment, but always humbly
submit to the decisions of the Holy Church."
(page 77, *A Full Catechism of the Catholic Religion*, Fr. Joseph De
Harbe, S.J.)

The Catholic Church has always condemned abortion as a grave evil.
Christian writers from the first-century author of the Didache to Pope
John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae ("The Gospel of Life")
have maintained that the Bible forbids abortion, just as it forbids
murder. This tract will provide some examples of this consistent witness
from the writings of the Fathers of the Church.

As the early Christian writer Tertullian pointed out, the law of Moses
ordered strict penalties for causing an abortion. We read, "If men who
are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely
[Hebrew: "so that her child comes out"], but there is no serious injury,
the offender must be fined whatever the woman¹s husband demands and the
court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for
life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (Ex.
21:22­24).

This applies the lex talionis or "law of retribution" to abortion. The
lex talionis establishes the just punishment for an injury (eye for eye,
tooth for tooth, life for life, compared to the much greater
retributions that had been common before, such as life for eye, life for
tooth, lives of the offender¹s family for one life).

The lex talionis would already have been applied to a woman who was
injured in a fight. The distinguishing point in this passage is that a
pregnant woman is hurt "so that her child comes out"; the child is the
focus of the lex talionis in this passage. Aborted babies must have
justice, too.

This is because they, like older children, have souls, even though
marred by original sin. David tells us, "Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me" (Ps. 51:5, NIV). Since
sinfulness is a spiritual rather than a physical condition, David must
have had a spiritual nature from the time of conception.

The same is shown in James 2:26, which tells us that "the body without
the spirit is dead": The soul is the life-principle of the human body.
Since from the time of conception the child¹s body is alive (as shown by
the fact it is growing), the child¹s body must already have its spirit.

Thus, in 1995 Pope John Paul II declared that the Church¹s teaching on
abortion "is unchanged and unchangeable. Therefore, by the authority
which Christ conferred upon Peter and his successors . . . I declare
that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means,
always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate
killing of an innocent human being. This doctrine is based upon the
natural law and upon the written word of God, is transmitted by the
Church¹s tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium.
No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an
act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the law of
God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself,
and proclaimed by the Church" (Evangelium Vitae 62).

The early Church Fathers agreed. Fortunately, abortion, like all sins,
is forgivable; and forgiveness is as close as the nearest confessional.



The Didache


"The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder. You shall
not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit
fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic. You
shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy
a newborn child" (Didache 2:1­2 [A.D. 70]).



The Letter of Barnabas


"The way of light, then, is as follows. If anyone desires to travel to
the appointed place, he must be zealous in his works. The knowledge,
therefore, which is given to us for the purpose of walking in this way,
is the following. . . . Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring
abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born" (Letter of
Barnabas 19 [A.D. 74]).



The Apocalypse of Peter


"And near that place I saw another strait place . . . and there sat
women. . . . And over against them many children who were born to them
out of due time sat crying. And there came forth from them rays of fire
and smote the women in the eyes. And these were the accursed who
conceived and caused abortion" (The Apocalypse of Peter 25 [A.D. 137]).



Athenagoras


"What man of sound mind, therefore, will affirm, while such is our
character, that we are murderers?
. . . [W]hen we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion
commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion,
on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the
same person to regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and
therefore an object of God¹s care, and when it has passed into life, to
kill it; and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are
chargeable with child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been
reared to destroy it" (A Plea for the Christians 35 [A.D. 177]).



Tertullian


"In our case, a murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy
even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood
from the other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth
is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take
away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That
is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its
seed" (Apology 9:8 [A.D. 197]).

"Among surgeons¹ tools there is a certain instrument, which is formed
with a nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the uterus first of
all and keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular blade,
by means of which the limbs [of the child] within the womb are dissected
with anxious but unfaltering care; its last appendage being a blunted or
covered hook, wherewith the entire fetus is extracted by a violent delivery.

"There is also [another instrument in the shape of] a copper needle or
spike, by which the actual death is managed in this furtive robbery of
life: They give it, from its infanticide function, the name of
embruosphaktes, [meaning] "the slayer of the infant," which of course
was alive. . . .

"[The doctors who performed abortions] all knew well enough that a
living being had been conceived, and [they] pitied this most luckless
infant state, which had first to be put to death, to escape being
tortured alive" (The Soul 25 [A.D. 210]).

"Now we allow that life begins with conception because we contend that
the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at
the same moment and place that the soul does" (ibid., 27).

"The law of Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties the man who shall
cause abortion [Ex. 21:22­24]" (ibid., 37).



Minucius Felix


"There are some [pagan] women who, by drinking medical preparations,
extinguish the source of the future man in their very bowels and thus
commit a parricide before they bring forth. And these things assuredly
come down from the teaching of your [false] gods. . . . To us
[Christians] it is not lawful either to see or hear of homicide"
(Octavius 30 [A.D. 226]).



Hippolytus


"Women who were reputed to be believers began to take drugs to render
themselves sterile, and to bind themselves tightly so as to expel what
was being conceived, since they would not, on account of relatives and
excess wealth, want to have a child by a slave or by any insignificant
person. See, then, into what great impiety that lawless one has
proceeded, by teaching adultery and murder at the same time!"
(Refutation of All Heresies [A.D. 228]).



Council of Ancyra


"Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that which they
have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a
former decree excluded them until the hour of death, and to this some
have assented. Nevertheless, being desirous to use somewhat greater
lenity, we have ordained that they fulfill ten years [of penance],
according to the prescribed degrees" (canon 21 [A.D. 314]).



Basil the Great


"Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years¹ penance, whether the
embryo were perfectly formed, or not" (First Canonical Letter, canon 2
[A.D. 374]).

"He that kills another with a sword, or hurls an axe at his own wife and
kills her, is guilty of willful murder; not he who throws a stone at a
dog, and unintentionally kills a man, or who corrects one with a rod, or
scourge, in order to reform him, or who kills a man in his own defense,
when he only designed to hurt him. But the man, or woman, is a murderer
that gives a philtrum, if the man that takes it dies upon it; so are
they who take medicines to procure abortion; and so are they who kill on
the highway, and rapparees" (ibid., canon 8).



John Chrysostom


"Wherefore I beseech you, flee fornication. . . . Why sow where the
ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit?‹where there are many
efforts at abortion?‹where there is murder before the birth? For even
the harlot you do not let continue a mere harlot, but make her a
murderess also. You see how drunkenness leads to prostitution,
prostitution to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather to a something
even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not
take off the thing born, but prevents its being born. Why then do thou
abuse the gift of God, and fight with his laws, and follow after what is
a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber
for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto
slaughter? For with a view to drawing more money by being agreeable and
an object of longing to her lovers, even this she is not backward to do,
so heaping upon thy head a great pile of fire. For even if the daring
deed be hers, yet the causing of it is thine" (Homilies on Romans 24
[A.D. 391]).



Jerome


"I cannot bring myself to speak of the many virgins who daily fall and
are lost to the bosom of the Church, their mother. . . . Some go so far
as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder
human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find
themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion,
and when, as often happens, they die with their offspring, they enter
the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ
but also of suicide and child murder" (Letters 22:13 [A.D. 396]).



The Apostolic Constitutions


"Thou shalt not use magic. Thou shalt not use witchcraft; for he says,
ŒYou shall not suffer a witch to live¹ [Ex. 22:18]. Thou shall not slay
thy child by causing abortion, nor kill that which is begotten. . . .
[I]f it be slain, [it] shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed"
(Apostolic Constitutions 7:3 [A.D. 400]).

On Tue, 10 May 2005 11:49:51 +0100, Pat Winstanley <boredofspam2004@yahoo.co.uk> emanated:

In article <jrs081phfpib0rqo4s2mels9k2jk4b28j0@4ax.com>, mauritius4
@hotmail.com says...

In that case there was no crime involved in the pregnancy coming about.

So why should a pregnant woman be forced to continue that pregnancy?

Well, after all, it's her child, too, regardless of how it came about;
for at least that if nothing else.

What child? There's no child at the time of a pregnancy.

Okay...

Well, after all, ~it'll be~ her child, too, regardless of how its conception came
about; for at least that if nothing else.

...happy?

Alan