San Diego News Notes - March 2001
Contents © 2001 by Jim Holman - jholman@adnc.com
http://www.sdnewsnotes.com/ed/articles/2001/0301rp.htm
Priest Quotes Encyclicals to Non-Catholics
Moral Truth in Mission Valley
Editor: Following are excerpts from a January 31, 2001 talk given to the Adam Smith Institute in Mission Valley. The institute is a local group of conservative thinkers and activists.
I am Father Richard Perozich, pastor of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in City Heights West, Marlborough and Orange. I will reflect on the beliefs and objectives of the Adam Smith Institute from the perspective of a Roman Catholic priest and an American citizen....
It seems that we as a society have more problems now than ever before in America: more poverty, weaker military, candidates who say whatever it takes to get elected, and families that are anything but strong. We have all contributed to this to some extent by our own participation in the living according to our feelings instead of sound moral direction based in natural law, in our weakness of character, in our singular satisfaction with our own particular lives, and in the deception by forces which occasionally are beyond our control....
On your brochure, Strong Families is the fourth item listed. In the Catholic Church, strong family is number one priority. It is the foundational unit created by God in which people are formed in character. I grew up in the 50s and early 60s. We were taught to be people of character, of morality rather than to be led by our feelings. Marriage was sacred. I had an intact family of a married mother and father who went to church every Sunday, who put me in a parochial school. We had no divorces on either side of the family. We knew of one friend of the family who divorced and remarried outside the church. It was a scandal! Contraception would have been a condom used for birth control more commonly by teen aged fornicators rather than married couples. Stores were raided for selling pornography. Homosexual acts were criminal, and practicing homosexuals were urged to go to treatment to control their sexual impulses. Abortion was a tragic choice of desperate women often to save their reputations.
Now, more than half of all prospective married couples live together before marriage. These live-in relationships result in divorce in the first 15 months 80 percent of the time. The men continue to move on to serial monogamy. Some women do find a more permanent relationship in marriage. More than 60 percent of all marriages begun without a live-in relationship also end in divorce with the tearing apart of families, and disregard for the effect on the children whose experience of their parents' actions form them to act the same. Artificial insemination is done on single women to create a child without a father who, incidentally it is being promulgated as of little value in a family. The promises of sexual pleasure and fulfillment are declared as paramount to fulfillment as a human person in 21st century America. Pornography can be obtained on the internet for those who wish to abuse themselves in the privacy of their home office rather than visit the numerous strip clubs or the public porn shops. People who practice the unnatural vice of homosexuality parade down the street, teach as normal in the school their ideologies, and vilify Christians and the family. Laws are passed to create new types of "marriage" and "family" with rights. New drugs to allow sex without consequence are on the market so that character and responsibility continue to decline while each of us lives according to our sexual whims. We publicly pay for abortions to kill our children which are an inconvenience, destroying the life of countless women who end up bitter, angry, drug addicted, emotionally scarred for life.
Are you surprised? I'm not. I'm shocked to experience it, but I am not surprised.
Over the years the popes of the Catholic church have made various statements to guide God's people regarding character, holiness, marriage, family life, sexuality, and the gospel of life. In each of these areas, our Catholic popes have predicted the consequences of departing from the natural law created by God, written in the heart of each human person, given in the written word in the Bible, and continually unfolded for each age in the living tradition of God and His people in the Church.
When a pope issues a statement, it is in various forms for the reception of the faithful. He does not divine these statements alone like Johnny Carson as the "Great Karnac." With other theologians, he searches the words of scripture, reads the teachings of those gone before him, brings these to prayer, and then proclaims for our time the truth of God that has always been since the creation of the world.
Each statement has a different character. One of the most common is an encyclical. Encyclicals are circular letters usually from pope to bishops and the faithful in response to a moral or faith crisis of the time. Yet anything he says for us Catholics in matters of faith and morals is a proclamation of the truth to explain God's word so that Catholics conform their minds to that of Christ rather than to that of the world...
In 1880, Pope Leo XIII promulgated Arcanum (Hidden Design of God). The documents written in Latin are usually titled by the first words of the statement.) He warns against the easing of divorce in all of the world's societies. The teaching from 120 years ago set up the slippery slope: Easy divorce leads to destruction of family and character; destruction of family and character lead to free sexual pleasure with contraception; contraception leads to abortion; abortion to the destruction of society and human character and the perversion of one's sexuality. He reaffirms the sacredness of marriage. He lists the consequences of divorce on the person, the family, children, and society....
In the early part of the twentieth century the Church of England broke ranks with other Christian Churches and permitted contraception as a valid practice in marriage. This opens the door to sexual pleasure without consequence or better said, the natural effect of the possibility of transmitting human life. Pope Pius XI in 1930 responded to the subsequent situation with Castii Connubii (Chaste Wedlock).... The pope 70 years ago said that contraception would lead to abortion. It has. In Humanae Vitæ (Of Human Life) in 1976, Pope Paul VI commented against abortion as one of the vile forms of contraception. Today it is a free market industry funded by the government.
On December 29, 1999 the feast of the Holy Family of Jesus Mary and Joseph, Pope John Paul II addressed what is a family and the threats to the family today: "At the beginning of the Holy Year 2000, today's feast gives me a favourable opportunity to appeal anew for the rights of the family, of life and of children which are also recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Indeed, in order to promote human rights, those of the family must be protected since it is from families that a full response can be made to the challenges of the present and the future...."
Yet in the year 2000 in the U.S. and indeed in all the world, this concept of marriage is being discarded. The most recent challenges to marriage and the God-given creation of the family come from practicing or promoting homosexualists, that is those who have homogenital relations or those who promulgate this activity as normal, as a right. The new definitions of marriage are any number of people who come together for any amount of time calling themselves a couple, a marriage, or a union. The slippery slope argument fallacy from this is that if children are present in this relationship, then it is a family. Nothing can be farther from the truth. This is only a small challenge to the family, since persons with same-sex attraction comprise at most two percent of the population, and of those, less than one percent would be activists in this area. The primary challenge to marriage and family comes from you and me, the heterosexual community. We undermined marriage several decades ago when we went to no-fault divorce, or divorce for simple reasons i.e. irreconcilable differences. We did this because of our own morally weak character, a lack of the recognition of the sacredness of marriage, the lack of the will to fight for something good, the deterioration of the American person to live at the level of his feelings as his moral compass. (The Catholic Church incidentally recognizes divorce in the civil arena, but still sees the civilly divorced as married before God.)
We created new "marriages" and "families" when we left our wives and husbands or in simple divorce, and lived with or married new ones. Some of us have done this several times. We created confusion in the lives of our children who now see this new way of forming relationships and calling them marriage and family. We have validated these new relationships by granting "domestic partner" benefits from our major companies to these overwhelming number of heterosexual de facto unions (the homosexual ones being only a small percentage of these). We grant aid to "families" with dependent children, when no family exists, thus validating these de facto unions as loose as they may be. Another way in which we live life in accord with our feelings is contraception.
While family planning is certainly a prudent concern, the manner in which it is done deeply affects the persons involved. In his 1976 encyclical Humanae Vitæ (Of Human Life), Pope Paul VI going against the majority opinion of the theologians which advise a pope when he issues a statement, affirmed the long-held truth that artificial contraception damages the family relationship and the covenant with God, yet said that natural means of birth control are perfectly fine....
* * *
In my district, I spoke about people's issues to the degree that I could to my congregation. I am sure they heard and responded. But we elected a practicing promoting homosexualist woman to the state assembly, a woman who wishes to pervert the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples and who supports a woman's right to kill. We elected a practicing promoting homosexualist woman to city council, a woman who was involved in the abortion industry. Several years ago we rejected a Catholic pro-life gubernatorial candidate and a Protestant pro-life senatorial candidate in favor of governor Gray Davis and Barbara Boxer. This is absolutely offensive to me, but not surprising.
Our own selfish behavior of the past 30 years has led up to this. Divorce on demand to contraception; contraception on demand to sexual promiscuity; sexual promiscuity to abortion; failed families to more failed families and the rise of homosexuality. If we want change, we have to begin first within us to challenge our own attitudes and behaviors. If we are living credible lives which we sincerely believe are inspired from divine truth and guidance, then we will have the emotion to empower us to begin finally to fight for what is right and good for ourselves, our families, and our nation. When we live our own lives well, then we will have be credible witness to shine as lights on the darkness of confusion, offering our nation true justice and peace, as our God proclaims for us and as our founding fathers intended.
Sources:
Encyclical "Arcanum" (On Christian Marriage) Pope Leo XIII - 1880
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/L13CMR.HTM
Encyclical "Castii Connubbi" (Chaste Wedlock) Pope Pius XI - 1930
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/P11CASTI.HTM
Encyclical "Humanae Vitae" (Of Human Life) Pope Paul VI - 1976
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/P6HUMANA.HTM
Charter of the Rights of the Family - 1983
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/family/documents/rc_pc_family_doc_ 19831022_family-rights_en.html
Universal Declaration of Human Rights - 1948
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
Pontifical Council for the Family - The Family and Human Rights - 1999
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/family/documents/rc_pc_family_doc_ 20001115_family-human-rights_en.html
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