When you speak against birth control in this culture, you're seen to be radically out of step with what is main stream, you're seen to be someone who can't accept reality, you're seen to be a religious fanatic or worse.
Links to the Gandhi piece, and more, at Mark's place.Gandhi is hip and cool as a picture on a T shirt or a Barnes and Noble bag for our cultured despisers.
But *listen* to him when he says things that would not play on “All Things Considered”? Fuggedaboudit. Exactly the same thing will happen with a Pope from a developing nation. When we get one (as I presume we will sooner or later, though I think not this time) there will be a few days of wonder that an African or Asian is doing the job, and then the hand-wringing will start about the Pope suffering from post-colonial false consciousness (meaning “he believes the Catholic faith”), outdated “tribal” sexism (and by “tribal” we think you catch our drift, hint, hint), “backward” superstitions and so forth. This will come far more from racists on the Left than on the Right. Because the racism of the Left will be played out by pop atheists and similar shallow pundits who make no distinctions between the Catholic faith and the natives of Skull Island doing the Kong Dance. It’s all just primitive savagery and mystical mumbo jumbo, as we are constantly assured. A Pope who says, well, what the Church says and what Gandhi says will not be received like some new Nelson Mandela by the Western press. He will be derided as an emissary from backward lands who need enlightened Westerners to teach them shallow atheism and cull their numbers with the blessings of birth control.
Here’s the deal: the world will always hate the gospel. Always. Nothing the Church does will ever change that. And certainly not the election of a Pope from a developing country. We are dealing with forces far beyond the merely cultural or political. We’re talking principalities and powers. The devil will hate a faithful African, Brazilian, or Chinese as much as he hated a faithful Pole who was also from an oppressed people. Our task is to pray for a faithful Pope, not a popular one. Seek first the Kingdom and all else we need will be added as well.