Faithful Environment for Study is the Best Beginning for a Faithful Life

At this time of year, when so many young people are deciding which university or college to attend, perhaps it is well to consider not only the content of the course one hopes to follow, but also the quality of the Roman Catholic chaplaincy at the college or university.

A particular course can - hopefully - offer great benefits for one's future success in life. However, it is an unavoidable fact that the guidance received in the practice of one's Faith during further education - a time when one is often vulnerable as never before - can sustain or destroy one in life for many years to come - if not forever.

The year 1968 saw great upheavals everywhere - not least on university campuses. Many young people were swept up in the new ideologies of supposed 'freedom' and 'permissiveness'. These included many young people who had been committed Catholics when they left school, but were ill-equipped in the knowledge of their faith to withstand the anti-religious (particularly anti-Catholic) stance of the new society they found themselves in. Sadly many left the Church, believing it to be out-dated in its teaching. The publication of 'Humanae Vitae' seemed only to confirm this, as the 'infallible' secular world never ceased to remind us. Very few young people actually read the encyclical, but the majority of an entire Catholic generation turned its back on its Faith, without knowing of the deep compassion (to say nothing of the bravery) of Pope Paul Vl that is so evident on reading it.

These young people are nearing retirement now - the promises and excesses of the 1960's now seem nothing if not an illusion.. broken marriages and a deep unhappiness are the lot of the majority.
I believe that many would turn back to their Faith now if they understood that Almighty God is still searching for them and offering them the life they rejected years ago...

Maybe we need a Youth 2000 for 'Oldies'.... !

Gabrielle

The Evils of All Contraception - Even Barrier Methods

While listening to the radio today I heard a very shocking account of boy gang initiation rituals in this country where apparently girls as young as ten are raped by the gang. Members of a charity who say they are helping these young women were interviewed. One said they were teaching these young women that their bodies are their own to do what they want with, so long as they are consenting to what is done.
Are our bodies our own? Or are we created by God, to know love and serve Him and to be happy with Him for all eternity?
But of course we human beings are very clever. We have managed to find a way to thwart God's plan (as human beings have so foolishly done from Adam and Eve onwards) and interfere with His creation by inventing contraception. Many reasons are given as to how and why this 'wonderful' invention can change our lives for the better. The Catholic Church examined the case for contraception and concluded that it was against God's law and outlined the reasons for this conclusion in a document called 'Humanae Vitae'. I along with many catholics decided this was a harsh and unrealistic conclusion. I was working with young families at the time and was very sympathetic towards those married couples who already had children and who were living in poverty. What was wrong, I thought, with allowing them to use barrier methods of contraception? They already had enough to cope with.
It was only some years later that I learned how right and wise the teaching of the Church is and I also learned about natural family planning. The Church does not, contrary to what many think, expect parents to have more children than they can cope with spiritually, emotionally, practically or financially. Married couples are required to always be open to life, but they can use natural family planning to plan the number of children they have in relation to their spiritual, physical, emotional and financial resources. Also those who have problems conceiving a child can use natural family planning help them to do so.
Gradually I began to realise what an evil contraception really is. Over the years I have seen the many awful effects on humanity including, for example, the murder of millions of unborn babies through abortion when contraception fails, the easy availability of contraception and abortion on demand, even to school children whose parents do not have to be informed.
The majority of the women helped by the Good Counsel Network to avoid abortion, have become pregnant due to the failure of contraception. Since they are a random sample of women approaching abortion clinics it goes without saying that the majority of women who have abortions do so due to contraception failure.

Ronni O'Gara

We Must Conform Ourselves to Christ's Church

In the early 1970s, many Catholics chose to ignore what seemed to be the 'impossible' demands made by Humanae Vitae,. noting that ultimately use of contraception was 'up to the individual conscience'... as Cardinal Heenan mentioned in an interview at the time (some would say his words were misrepresented - Editor). Few considered the necessity of an informed conscience in such a situation. In the 'Permissive Society' of that era, flooded with new secular values, very few people realised just how right Pope Paul VI was in foreseeing the disasters of a contraceptive mentality for society.

When Pope Paul died, much was made of the fact that a new Pope would 'almost certainly' change Church teaching on contraception - after all, the Church would have to move with the times.... It came as something of a disappointment that Pope John Paul II was such a great supporter of Humanae Vitae - at the time the only encyclical every one had heard of - but sadly no one had read - or one might have discovered that it was far more than simply 'the Catholic Church saying no to contraception'.

However, a (non-Catholic) journalist who had closely followed the events of the last years of the Communist Eastern Bloc who offered new light on the new pope's staunch defence of Church teaching.

Surely, argued the journalist, any bishop having Auschwitz within the boundaries of his own diocese would not be credible as a pastor of souls at all if, having reflected on the terrors that had existed therein, he did not conclude that utter and profound respect for all human life from conception until natural death was the only way man could truly save himself from the tyranny of an new and even more horrific ideology - however difficult or inconvenient this might appear to be to us.

Therein was the truth of Church teaching - our task has to be be to conform our lives to the requirements of the Church - for the Church to cease to guide us for fear of unpopularity would be disastrous for us all.

Gabrielle