As we approach the great feast of Pentecost we cannot but
help thinking about the account of Jesus giving the Holy Spirit to his Apostles
as recorded in St. John’s Gospel (John 20:21-23). It’s not the great public outpouring we will
hear from the Acts of the Apostles on the feast itself, it is a very private
and intimate thing. Recall they were in
a locked room and the Lord came to them.
“[Jesus] said to them again,
“Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
“Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”
This account is noteworthy because the first thing the Lord
offers his grieving and frightened disciples is “Peace.” It is something we all crave, the Peace of
Christ. It is something wholly different
than what the world thinks of as peace (John 14:27), it is a sense
that the Lord will take care of us and we can trust everything to him.
That wish was in my mind as I left my office for home
yesterday. I got into the car and turned
on the radio. The day being Monday, I
forgot that the last program I listened to was “A Prairie Home Companion” on Michigan Public Radio. And
before I knew it, I was listening to a program called “All Things Considered” a
news program put out by National Public Radio (NPR). The story I listened to was about single
mothers in Mexico and I got sucked in. Here is a link to the story but I give
you fair warning, the morality expressed in this “news piece” is very
upsetting. As
Stigma Eases, Single Motherhood In Mexico Is On The Rise.
Perhaps I am just not in tune with secular logic. The article extols the heroic efforts of
single mothers in Mexico to bring up their families under extremely difficult
circumstances. Not once does the author condemn
the fact that it is clearly a result of the destruction of the nuclear
family. Rather she blames the Catholic
Church for creating a historical stigma that having children outside of
marriage was an unacceptable practice.
While praising the rise in single motherhood, she proudly quotes anthropologist
and editor of a feminist journal, Marta Llamas; “Though the country's roots are
strongly Catholic, Llamas says, 80 percent of Mexican women say they use
contraceptives.”
So let’s get this straight, 80 percent of the women in
Mexico use contraceptives but the instance of single motherhood has risen by 40
percent. That must mean that the culture
of secular hedonism coupled with the fail-safe “pill” is working nicely
(SIC). How can they not see that what
they extol is the degradation of women, not some wonderful spirit of individuality?
They use the word “Catholic” like it is a social
disease and at the same time pay tribute to those who have thrown off the yoke
of chastity to engage in personal pleasure.
Ah, but see how strong they are, accepting responsibility for this “indiscretion”. They
did not mention what the rate of abortions was in Mexico these days. Here is what the author of the story, Carrie
Kahn, did not say (or know) “A new national study shows that the number of
abortions performed in Mexico increased by one-third between 1990 and 2006
(from 533,000 to 875,000), despite legal restrictions that virtually ban the
procedure in most parts of the country.” (Source: Guttmacker Institute)
We are sure the NPR folks are doing all they can to change
the historic culture of life in Mexico to the culture of death they support in
the US today. How am I ever going to get
to the Peace of Christ today?
Pax,
