Pope Pius XII lamented years ago that the worst sin of the 20^th Century was that it had lost all sense of sin. His statement was made decades ago, but is even more relevant today. Through the effects of slick media propaganda we as a nation have been drifting further and further into a foggy area of rationalizations and pseudo-science.  
     We are all aware of the illegal drug abuse in our country and in the world, but what about the legal drug abuse perpetrated in our schools, institutions and homes?  An atheistic, pseudo-scientific fable has been used to promote drug abuse and to explain away what is more properly understood as “sin” and “evil.”  James Q. Wilson, Collins Professor of Management and Political Science at UCLA, writes:

... even now, when the dangers of drug abuse are well understood, many educated people still discuss the drug problem in almost every way except the right way. They talk about the "costs" of drug use and the "socioeconomic factors"  that shape that use. They rarely speak plainly--drug use is wrong because it is immoral and it is immoral because it enslaves the mind and destroys the soul. It is as if it were a mark of sophistication for us to shun the language of morality in discussing the problems of mankind.

Mislabeling personal sin and irresponsibility as "disease"

     As Daniel Duke laments, “Finding someone or something to blame for social problems has emerged as a full-time occupation for a host of social scientists. The recent history of research in the social sciences has witnessed the unrelenting depersonalization of blame.”[1]  He writes that school discipline problems are shifted to other factors for reasons that are often politically expedient.  Garth Wood's views are quite similar: “It has become the fashion of late to consider that the development of an unsatisfactory personality should carry with it no implications of blame [and] should not occasion feelings of guilt…”[2] 
     The United States Congress declared the 1990s to be the “Decade of the Brain,” yet another sign of our country’s preoccupation with the material rather than the spiritual:  

In reality, the Decade of the Brain theme epitomizes the problem in America: materialism. Not just materialism in the ordinary sense of the preoccupation with owning wealth and valuable physical objects. The Decade of the Brain is actually a time of moral and philosophical materialism, for psychiatry has convinced a great portion of the public that psychosocial and spiritual suffering has no psychological or spiritual meaning whatsoever but emanates instead from abnormalities in the physiology of the brain.[3]  

     In our post-Christian and pagan society, the idea of personal sin and responsibility has been progressively fading from view.  What concepts have replaced sin in America?  Genetics and brain disease. This new and pseudo-scientific view has been popularized by a field called biopsychiatry, in collusion with many drug companies such as Eli Lilly.  
     Stanton Peele, in his book The Diseasing of America, writes “how our society is going wrong in excusing crime, compelling people to undergo treatment, and wildly mixing up moral responsibility with disease diagnosis.”[4]  What exactly does he mean by this? He means that if man is merely “a bundle of impulses and traumas, he can be absolved of guilt and responsibility for his actions.”[5]  If man is merely matter in motion with no immortal spiritual soul, and genetics and “biochemical imbalances” determine behavior, the idea of responsibility would be meaningless. But such a reductionist view is clearly against reality and Church teaching. 

Mr. Peele points out that our understanding of responsibility is of the utmost importance: 

At stake here is not so much science as the age-old debate over the nature of man and whether or not he is a free moral actor exercising an autonomous will. The idea that man should be held accountable for his choices implies such a free will.[6] 

As the understanding of personal responsibility has been so entirely emptied of meaning, many courtrooms have consequently been turned into travesties of justice: 

Inevitably, the repeal of personal responsibility has undermined society’s ability to call wrongdoers to account for their behavior. In the criminal courts, where the illness excuse has become the sine qua non of a sophisticated defense, the extent of this sea change is depressingly obvious. From Michael Deaver (alcoholism) to John W. Hinckley (insanity) to San Francisco Supervisor Dan White (Twinkies) to murderer Robert Alton Harris (fetal alcohol syndrome), our therapeutic culture has an explanation and a defense at hand. Although the nuances and intonations differ, the plaintive cry is always the same: I am not at fault. [Fill in the Blank] made me do it.[7]

The Church and personal responsibility 

The Church is very clear in her teaching regarding free will and the nature of human responsibility. Notably: 

The position taken by the Holy Office and that stated by Pius XII in his address on the education of Christian conscience[8] and in the address to psychotherapists[9]  have clarified one limit beyond which speculation as to human responsibility cannot go without deviating from traditional Catholic doctrine. Normal human beings—normal being understood as signifying not ideally normal, or perfectly healthy persons, but the common run of men—under ordinary circumstance (including circumstances of temptation, stress, and pressure) possess sufficient freedom to be capable of sin and indeed, of mortal sin.[10]  

Drug use magnifies helplessness 

Dr. Peter Breggin, a best-selling author and practicing psychiatrist, has successfully treated many people who were railroaded into taking drugs to solve their problems.  He has enabled many to understand that the taking of such drugs as Ritalin and Prozac has failed to address the personal conflicts in these people’s lives.  Dr. Breggin's tells us that from his experience that: 

To the extent that individuals believe they have “mental disorders” or “brain diseases” that are causing their emotional suffering, they become dependent on experts rather than upon themselves for the “cure.” They are further stigmatized by being told they need to take their psychoactive (mind-altering) drugs to “make them normal.” The process of psychiatric diagnosing and treatment often actually magnifies the patient’s feelings of helplessness and futility rather than empowering the patient to personally overcome them.[11]   

     R.C. Lewontin, in his book Not in Our Genes, states that “The massive utilization of psychotropics is part of the mechanism of adjusting the individual to the status quo, of hyping, sedating, or tranquilizing the emotions.”[12]  Drug use has increasingly become a means to adapt to stress and social conditions, as well as to control others.  
     As British author and parliamentarian John Buchan wrote in the 1930s, “It is when a people loses its self-confidence that it surrenders its soul to a dictator or an oligarchy. In Mr. Walter Lippman’s tremendous metaphor, it welcomes manacles to prevent its hands from shaking.”[13]    

In widespread practice, America has accepted drugs as a chemical security blanket.

REFERENCES:

[1] Daniel Duke, “Student Behavior, the Depersonalization of Blame and the Society of Victims,”; see Keith Baker and Robert Rubel, eds., Violence and Crime in the Schools (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1980), 31-47.
[2] Garth Wood, The Myth of Neurosis, 41-42.
[3] Dr. Peter R. Breggin, Reclaiming our Children: A Healing Plan for a Nation in Crisis, 20.
[4] Stanton Peele,  The Diseasing of America, (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1989), 5.
[5] ibid., 147.
[6] Ibid., 146.
[7] Sykes, Charles J.  A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 144.
[8] AAS 44 (1952) 270-278.
[9] AAS (1953) 278-286.
[10] Catholic Encyclopedia, “Responsibility,” 397.
[11] Breggin, Reclaiming Our Children, 27.
[12] R.C. Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin, Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature, 175.
[13] Sykes, Charles J.  A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character, 160.

Our Lady of the Roses Bayside messages
These messages came from Jesus, Mary, and the saints to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, NY, from 1968 to 1995.

LOSS OF FREE WILL
"Little by little, through the years, man has orientated and made the human being in his mind, with his loss of free will through drugs and brainwashing through other mediums, man has now been reduced to almost a robot state.*
     "Do not, My children, be deceived by the father of liars, and his deception in raising up armies that gather under the banner of communism, atheism, satanism, agnosticism. And while they work both day and night to gather the powers and the arsenals to enslave your country and the world, what do you do? You are like children going through the fields picking daisies, tripping along merrily, high on your way of life; your drugs and your alcohol and your dreams created by false mediums." Jesus, April 2, 1977

* "The robotic effect that makes children temporarily more obedient and compliant is the result of drug-induced brain malfunction." (Dr. Peter R. Breggin,Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Stimulants for Children, 106) 

DRUGS  ARE  A PLAGUE
Veronica - The enemies of God, the conspiracy of evil in this country and throughout the world now, this group of the octopus that is reaching out in every direction to destroy our country, the United States of America, and many countries now throughout the world, they cannot be labeled alone as communism, Our Lady said. Their atheism is far greater and more involved than just those small arms. Drugs are a plague, and the greatest plague for this country will be the continued acceleration of witchcraft and satanism. 
     Christians, all Christians at this time, Jesus said, must unite against the common enemy of God.  December 7, 1977 

SORCERY,  DRUGS,  WITCHCRAFT
"Lucifer was cast from Heaven, but he retained much knowledge. He is the father of all liars. He is and was and still is a murderer and a promoter of murder. He will reverse the nature of the Christian if he can. He will have you create a monster while searching for scientific knowledge of the creation of life.
     "He will promote in mankind a form of insanity, for sin is insanity. Man will descend to the level of the animal, degrading his body, committing murder, extermination of the elderly, extermination of the ill, destruction of the youth. Sorcery, drugs, witchcraft, My children. And don't laugh now: the snickers will be your downfall. Witchcraft is here now upon earth. It is no farce; it is no story; it is a fact. For it is diabolical, and the coming forth of demons." Jesus, February 10, 1978 

Directives from Heaven 

D89 - Sin   PDF
D92 - Free will   PDF
D141 - Responsibility   PDF
D142 - Sin of Omission   PDF
D166 - Drugs   PDF
D205 - Sin is insanity   PDF
 

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