David Ancell / Wednesday February 15, 2012
A secular reporter was interviewing someone at a World Youth Day who loved Blessed John Paul II. The argument she made with the interviewee was ” . . . but he’s against birth control devices.” Indeed, if you say that you are against contraception, there are plenty of people who will look at you as if you had said that eating whole wheat bread will cause spontaneous combustion.
Contraception has very widespread acceptance in our society. Now, we even have government leaders who are telling us that it is part of the basic healthcare needs of women. Somehow, it’s just so vital that women have “access” to contraception that every employer needs to provide insurance that covers it with no cost.
Does that make it right? There are plenty of people who will tell you that the Church should “get with the times.” Well, who or what are “the times,” and why should we listen to them? I don’t know about you, but I’d rather listen to God. Some people will accuse Catholics like me of blindly following church authority. In doing so, they are really insulting people like me who took the time to study and work hard for what I know. These same people will blindly follow “the times” without really being able to define exactly what it is they are following.
Because people are willing to follow “the times,” it never occurs to them that there might really be something wrong with the use of contraception. They just assume that we Catholics who believe the Church are hopelessly stuck in the past. Most such people have never bothered to read Humanae Vitae. They may not even know it exists. The Theology of the Body may also be unknown to them.
Not only is the Church’s teaching regarding contraception true, it is also a positive good. There are plenty of people out there who have heard the message presented as the good that it is and wondered “Why haven’t I heard this before?” Indeed, this time in which our government wants to trample on us and our religious freedom may well be something that God is using as our penance for our long time failure to spread the message. That failure is a failure on the part of both our clergy and laity.
The new Obama Administration mandate that requires all employers to provide contraceptive coverage at no cost is a great evil. This is true whether it’s the employer or the insurance company who has to provide. After all, where is the insurance company getting its money? The problem with the mandate goes beyond the Church and organizations run by the Church. It means that a Catholic like me can’t start his own business without being told that I have to pay for birth control for everyone. It also means that we will all pay higher premiums.
However, God permits evil to bring about a greater good. During the past few weeks, I’ve seen bishops whom I’ve never known to be great defenders of the Faith come out of the woodwork to speak against this evil. The issue is now getting more attention than I’ve ever seen it get.
Now is the perfect time to educate people, especially Catholics who for some reason don’t know or don’t accept the Church’s teaching. Let’s get out our materials and brush up so we can explain it. This would also be a great time for parishes who haven’t already done so to have a study session on Humanae Vitae, Theology of the Body, or some other resource. The mandate must be fought and ultimately overturned, but please don’t stop there. This is the perfect opportunity to tell the world about the true meaning of human sexuality.
Category: Catholic, Morality, Response
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