The Experts

The experts often agree that X, Y, and Z are all healthy, normal, ethical actions or beliefs, but the Church says that X,Y, and Z are sinful, disordered, or immoral. I hear "arguments" like this from time to time, covering a wide variety of topics: homosexuality, pornography, abortion, adultery, hook-ups/fornication, contraceptives... in our sex-saturated culture, it's pretty much any item on an exhaustive list of the sexual sins condemned by the Bible, by Tradition, and by the Magisterium which is brought into contention.

Often, the experts agree because consent is a criterion of becoming an expert. There are many examples of this. Students studying psychology and psychiatry are told that they cannot graduate or get licensed to practice unless they counsel a gay patient--and the counselling cannot be towards chastity. A sociologist publishes a peer-reviewed study with a large sample size which contradicts previously peer-reviewed studies using small and at times self-selected samples sizes, and brings upon himself the secular inquisition because his study found that children raised by heterosexual parents fare better in life than children raised by homosexual parents. And, to add one last recent example, the licensing practicum requirements in Britain to become an OB/GYN are prohibitive for Catholics and others of good faith:

Dr O’Donnell told the conference at Ealing Abbey, west London, on 17 May that a Catholic training to be a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology would soon find he or she had conscientious objections to such tasks as prescribing artificial contraceptives, giving unmarried couples fertility treatment or Viagra to gay couples. 

To be a sound Catholic regarding sexual ethics it is not possible to train as a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist but this is not because of discrimination against Catholics. There is a total conflict of culture of what is good sex, a dichotomy of belief between what we as Christians believe is good overall for the individual and what secular society believes.’

Indeed, there have been attempts in the US to require that all OB/GYNs either commit abortion themselves, or refer their patients to another doctor who would commit the abortion instead. And there are medical schools which have required "abortion training" as a part of their residency programs, not to mention some states which have toyed with making such training a requirement of all medical schools.

Is it any wonder, then, when the experts' opnions are at times unanimously on the side of evil?