Posted on 02/22/2012 10:54:27 AM PST by marshmallow
A couple of weeks ago, our priest gave a homily about contraception. While speaking about the Health and Human Services mandate, our associate pastor, Fr. Jonathan Raia, made a few allusions to the fact that the Church believes that contraception is bad. There were over a thousand people packed into the building, and a slight but noticeable tension developed as he inched closer and closer to the subject. This most controversial of Catholic teachings had been splashed all over the news in recent days, ridiculed and denounced throughout popular culture, and the question hung in the air: “Is he going to go there?”
He did.
You can hear the whole homily on our parish website here. In the second half of his talk, he gently but unflinchingly explained that the Catholic Church teaches that contraception is wrong. He gave a bit of background about the reasoning behind this stance, cleared up some common misconceptions, and pointed people to resources where they could find out more about methods of Natural Family Planning. As he spoke, the thought came to mind:
I think we’re finally ready for this.
In the seven years that I’ve been going to Catholic churches, I’d never heard a priest speak so directly about the Church’s teaching in this area—and I can understand why. For decades our culture has perceived contraception as being akin to air or water: a universally good resource with no downside. Only an institution with the most nefarious motives would oppose everyone incorporating this invaluable blessing into their lives, the thinking went. And so I’m guessing that many of our priests felt like the misunderstanding on this topic was so deep and so widespread that they’d need hours of speaking time to even begin to address it properly, and thus avoided it in homilies.
(Excerpt) Read more at ncregister.com ...
Yes, it’s past time.
It’s a failing that the regime is exploiting.
I am downloading this homiily and look forward to listening to it. Hopefully other priests will follow suit. They are doing their parishoners a disservice if they ignore this issue. The Catholic Church is one of the only Christian churches who has held fast on this important issue. All Christians opposed contraception until around 1930.
One reason why even good churches don’t preach against contraception from the pulpit is because it is difficult to discuss clearly with children present.
I have not seen any authoritative explanation of why talks on contraception and shacking up are not addressed to parishioners from the pulpit or in Catholic newspapers. Comments on abortion are only directed to politicians. Looks like now the same for contraception. What outcome does the Church expect when they are relying on politicians to outlaw sin?
Our priest hasn’t even mentioned the whole Obamacare abortion/contraception mess. All he did was have the lector tell the parishioners to read the Bishop’s letter that was printed in the bulletin. (He did give us a lengthy “homily” about his vacation, however.) That was a few weeks ago. Since then, nary a word from him about any of this horrible situation. I am so disgusted with him! He’s a new, young priest who has been here less than a year. He has done nothing to gain my respect and has lost what little I had for him now. I am planning to move to Texas within the year and it can’t happen soon enough!
Thr first sermon I heard with my future wife was on NFP. We still laugh about that
Thr first sermon I heard with my future wife was on NFP. We still laugh about that
Thr first sermon I heard with my future wife was on NFP. We still laugh about that
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