Dear Friends,

July 25, 1968, a day that will live in infamy? That of course was the date of the promulgation of Humanae Vitae. 55 years later what has the failure to heed its teaching wrought and what has acceptance of its teachings bought?

As Pope Paul VI (now Saint Paul VI) predicted the widespread and uncritical acceptance of contraception has led to marital breakdown. No-fault divorce for one. This means for the first time in our history you can be commanded by a judge to appear in court for having done nothing wrong. A spouse who does not want to divorce is hauled into court and a great part of their life (and bank account) now is controlled by a judge for no other reason than for continuing to love their spouse. We can add to this sky-high rates of cohabitation (which amounts to experimenting on one another). The effects of contraception also contribute to harm women’s health, including death (just read the warning label on the pill or IUD); the poisoning of our lakes and rivers and water supply, the deformation of many aquatic species exposed to high levels of hormones in the water, the unknown effects on humans drinking and bathing in the same water supply. Same-sex marriage, polygamy, children raised without one parent, artificial insemination, surrogate mothers, unknown fathers from sperm donation and the legal and psychological mess these have caused; the spread of venereal diseases, increases in extramarital affairs; the birth of internet pornography, human trafficking in the sex trade, embryo destruction and experimentation all were spurred along by separating out procreation from conjugal love. And of course, abortion gives the illusion that having no child is better than having an unexpected one.

Dear Friends,

I recently viewed the remake of the Film, “All Quiet on the Western Front”. And it is every bit as jarring as the original. I encourage you to view it. Those of us who only see War from a distance and get a sanitized version from media need to familiarize ourselves with the brutality, cruelty and inhumanity that are too often characteristic of wars. Maybe then we would push harder for our leaders to exhaust every form of diplomacy before engaging in hostilities.

Dear Friends,

I find it a bit amusing how Americans can figure out ways to make a profit off a Solar Eclipse! Hotels, restaurants, and businesses along the path of totality that takes place NEXT year (4/8/24) already are anticipating their business ledgers to turn as black as the eclipsed light of the sun. Hotel bookings in some places are as high as $748 a night and many hotels are already booked a year in advance. Still, it is good for us to look up for a change and not down at our phone screens and to consider a subject that we give so little thought to in our times: cosmology. With each new change in understanding of the world at large, from the Copernican revolution to Newtonian physics to Einstein’s theory of Relativity, comes a change in the way we understand ourselves as well. When it comes to faith and science, way too many people remember the Galileo affair, but few know that Einstein’s theory of Relativity was given its biggest boost by a Catholic priest: Fr. Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian priest and mathematician. (what follows is from a wonderful blog that I encourage you to read: These Stone Walls: http://thesestonewalls.com/gordon-macrae/science-faith-big-bang-theory-creation/.

Dear Friends,

When the Enlightenment Period came along the Church found itself on its heels trying to defend the compatibility of faith with reason. And over the centuries that followed some outstanding intellectuals were able to do just that. Theologians to apologists to a few good Popes helped give faith a solid foundation that demonstrated that faith is compatible with reason. Perhaps the apex was Pope John Paul II (his landmark encyclical letter “Fides et Ratio”) and Benedict XVI, who both articulated a complete synthesis of faith and reason. Pope Benedict warned that there are “pathologies of faith and of reason”. Faith unhinged from reason becomes superstition and reason divorced from faith devolves into ideology. The unity of faith and reason give the most complete picture of humanity and the reality around us. (Though I admit we may have become too focused on reason and rationality at the expense of mystery and mysticism. Discussion for another day.) By the end of the Twentieth century, not even the “new atheists” like Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, were not able to mount a serious challenge to this synthesis.

Dear Friends,

We modern civilizations have learned to recognize that we are mortal like the others. We had heard tell of whole worlds vanished, of empires foundered with all their men and all their engines, sunk to the inexplorable depths of the centuries with their gods and laws, their academies and their pure and applied sciences, their grammars, dictionaries, classics, romantics, symbolists, their critics and the critics of their critics. We knew that all the apparent earth is made of ashes, and that ashes have a meaning. We perceived, through the misty bulk of history, the phantoms of huge vessels once laden with riches and learning.