Preaching the Gospel in Season and Out
I remember listening to a sermon from the pastor at our former parish years ago on Respect Life Sunday. Within it, he admitted his reluctance to preach on the topic of abortion or other life issues. He explained he was afraid of unsettling anyone who may be post-abortive (those having participated in an abortion in the past).
His mindset is not uncommon. I have heard anecdotally from other pro-life Catholics this is the excuse they hear priests making all too often.
[click to continue...]“A true and proper right to a child would be contrary to the child’s dignity and nature. The child is not an object to which one has a right, nor can he be considered as an object of ownership: rather, a child is a gift, “the supreme gift” and the most gratuitous gift of marriage, and is a living testimony of the mutual giving of his parents. For this reason, the child has the right, as already mentioned, to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents; and he also has the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception.”
[click to continue...]The message of Jonah is one filled with irony. First the sailors and then later the Assyrians are all so quick to recognize the power of God and the need to serve him, once confronted with the gravity of the situation (1:16; 3:6-9). And yet, Jonah, who claims to be the one serving the Lord, does not practice God as he ought to. Let that not be said of us.
[click to continue...]Is anyone really going to hold their breath waiting on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade?
I realize folks are excited that a majority of the current justices were appointed by Republican presidents (5-4).
They remain hopeful that someday soon the Supreme Court will, in fact, overturn Roe v. Wade.
[click to continue...]One prominent Catholic author and speaker recently took the extreme position of calling for the debate to be over: all Catholics ought to be practicing NFP, he claims.
[click to continue...]In the article she wrote, Dr. Wen describes the expanding her and her husband’s family as her “deepest desire.” How can the president of the nation’s largest abortion provider admit she (and thereby other women) deeply desire motherhood and family life? The backbone of this evil organization remains set on eradicating motherhood from the face of the earth, in the name of equality with men. It seeks to eliminate family life as an institution of society. I imagine the Planned Parenthood executives were pulling their hair out.
[click to continue...]“Be not deceived, God is not mocked. For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption” – Galatians 6:7-8.
[click to continue...]Please be more clear on just what we mean when we say, “contraception, fatal to the faith?”
What do we mean by the title and what is the thesis of this presentation? We mean that professed Catholics who practice contraception either give up the practice of contraception or they give up their Catholic faith.
[click to continue...]“Contraception is in fact not just an action without meaning; it is an action that contradicts the essential meaning which true conjugal intercourse should have as signifying total and unconditional self-donation. Instead of accepting each other totally, contraceptive spouses reject part of each other, because fertility is part of each one of them. They reject part of their mutual love: its power to be fruitful… A couple may say: we do not want our love to be fruitful. But if that is so, there is an inherent contradiction in their trying to express their love by means of an act which, of its nature, implies fruitful love; and there is even more of a contradiction if, when they engage in the act, they deliberately destroy the fertility-orientation from which precisely derives its capacity to express the uniqueness of their love” (L’Osservatore Romano, October 10, 1988, loc. cit.).
[click to continue...]If marital intercourse, therefore, expresses a unique relationship and union, this derives not from the sharing of a sensation but from the sharing of a power – of a sexual power that is complementary and extraordinary, and which is extraordinary precisely in virtue of its life-relatedness.
[click to continue...]Here’s a relatively unknown fact, even among many pro-lifers: any given abortion counselor at a clinic is likely to be post-abortive herself.
Ask yourself, why would this be?
[click to continue...], “One frequently comes across statements to the effect that ‘family planning or limitation is more easily accepted by people as they get better educated.’ Whether we realize it or not, to admit such statements unquestionably is to concede a whole philosophy of life.
“A very particular type of education thoroughly imbued with a very particular kind of values (or rather of anti-values), is necessary before people are brought to the point of easily accepting family limitation.
“Can such education be regarded as Christian education? Can it be regarded as true education at all?”
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