Long before the Exodus and the Ten Commandments, and even before the Fall, God still issued one Commandment to we His children. It was a simple one, and easily followed:
And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth.
And God said: Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed upon the earth, and all trees that have in themselves seed of their own kind, to be your meat: And to all the beasts of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to all that move upon the earth, and wherein there is life, that they may have to feed upon.
And it was so done. And God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good. And the evening and morning were the sixth day.
Well lookie how we have progressed to the present day: We now value contraception and abortion over increasing and multiplying to fill the whole universe with our children.
We are now more worried about ecological concerns over plants’ and animals’ survival than worrying about our unborn children.
The greatest sin of all is the Original sin, which was the one which brought about the Fall. It lives on even today as that tendency to fall away from love for God, that thing theologians call “concupiscence”, that disease of the soul which Christ’s hospital, the Church, was instituted to manage, cure, and ultimately eradicate. Amen.
The Crossed-out Zero right at the centre of the wider vacuous O. I suggest this as a “mathematical” image of Christ, the God Who Is With Us in our nothingness.
Catholicism Pure & Simple 
I couldn’t agree more.
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Excellent essay.
(But, grammar:
“God still issued one Commandment to we His children”
should be
“God still issued one Commandment to US His children.”
Just as you wouldn’t say,
“They issued a driver’s license to I”
but
“They issued a driver’s license to ME.”)
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This is why I have 5 children and people look at me like I’m crazy…like I’m doing something wrong by not getting “neutered” like a dog. It’s a good point you made bc for some reason there are people out who think “not eating the apple”, represented something that had to do with intercourse…but if they read the lines you have kindly shared they would see that the command to increase and multiply came first and foremost. Thank you for sharing.
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Thank you Mary and Gertrude for your prompt appreciation.
I felt I should nail my true colours to the mast before I get too identified” with the enemy” because of my mischievous cross-commenting of late.
I am a zillion per-cent pro Life, and always will be. I am like you all, a former blastocyst/embryo who thanks his mum and dad and all my teachers for all the sufferings they offered up to bring me into the world and raise me to self-awareness and self-competence for life in Christ.
The only future I see for the human race is in its growth as an enormous warmly affectionate extended family, brothers and sisters in Christ. There is no other way except endless division and atomisation, which can only end in mutually assured destruction (MAD).
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RJB, thank you mate, I’ve often made that grammar mistake. You have increased my unlikelihood for repeating it 😉
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Despite abortion and contraception, there are vastly more people in the world than ever before.
7.6 billion.
A mere century ago, there were 1.8 billion. Many of these poor devils in places like Africa today are risking their lives and/or dying in attempts to get to other parts of the world to simply try to survive. And it isn’t going to stop. It will get worse.
Make what you will of that.
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…And would it be fair to say that we are in favour of Catholics increasing and multiplying, but we don’t care much for Muslims doing it?
Probably not.
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There is nothing wrong with an increase in the number of human beings in this universe unless their forebears fail to provide for them. There is a superabundance of resources available for them if they only look for and pursue them without greed. When I say “them”, I mean “us”.
Contraception is a thing that should be reserved for unthinking critters like pigeons and cockroaches. Human beings need only education and to belong to a wider truly human community to thrive healthily.
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Dear Toad,
I have approved your comment for just one reason:
You need to take a holiday from this blog for at least a month. Consider yourself banned for that period. Enjoy the rest.
By Order of BB
BB
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Well done for reminding us of this MOST IMPORTANT Commandment BB!
The esteemed English poet, John Keats, once wrote to his brother these beautiful, insightful words:
”“Call the world if you please, ‘the vale of Soul-making’. Then you will find out the purpose of the world.”
That is exactly what the “purpose” of the world is, this minutely tiny blue planet spinning in the vastness of the universe, but especially chosen by God for immortal souls to be made… Why? So that one day, after their journey on earth, they/we may live in His Love and Happiness forever and ever.
That is the “purpose” for which we were created. And that is the reason we were given this “Commandment Zero” by God at the dawn of our existence.
But what do we do? We break the Commandment over and over again! Instead of treasuring the great gift of Life – all life, from conception to natural death – we throw our great “gift” to the swine. The Culture of Death reigns in the world now, and nowhere is that more visible than in the Abortion industry. Surely we will pay a great and painful price one day for our disobedience to God!
(We have just heard. with great sadness, that the Argentine Parliament has also now voted to liberalise abortion laws! Or, IOW, yet another ‘Catholic’ country votes to murder its defenceless children!)
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Dear Kathleen, I weep with you for the children never to be born! May our crying be heard in Heaven.
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That frog has not been banned in the past for far worse comments…??? “Pope Francis is sound as a pound”, What of that? Have we now got the lunatic’ running Bedlam? (smiling face here, with dexter eyelid shut)
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Geoff,
Clearly I am at least a little unhinged, else why would I go about under the moniker of a donkey.
The Church has been called a “Ship of fools”, for the simple good reason that none of its crew or passengers are perfect at all. The only things that unite us all are the Divinely infused love for the Triune God, and the Sacraments, those outward signs of inward Grace that transfuse us with the very Life of God.
I have been on sabbatical from this blog since 2015 for various reasons, not least an inability to keep up with the parry and thrust here, but I am hoping to return full time and soon, colleagues permitting.
I am very keen to prevent this place from becoming a mere echo-chamber where the same old tropes and opinions just get endlessly repeated and cheered on. As I try to do this, I am certain to upset people who derive comfort from those reverberating resonating repetitions. I shall seem like a fly in the ointment, or ass at the ballet, but that is my vocation.
BB
PS, Can you explain the “dexter eyelid” reference? I’m terribly dim.
PPS, You are in Australia are you not? I recently re-watched Crocodile Dundee, from which I gained that affection is often expressed there by a smack in the gob. Smack away so!
PPPS, I too think that James Martin SJ is very dodgy. Pope Francis, as our Vicar in Chief is someone I am not fit to criticise. Sorry that we disagree on that. Slainte!
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Oh please, BB! Everyone knows which eyelid is the dexter one. Well, excepting Geoff who I had to ejakate when he first mentioned it some weaks/munths ago:
The Man From Ironbark
Banjo Paterson, The Bulletin, 17 December 1892.
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