Catholicism Is Not a Disease

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,