Last month as we celebrated Respect Life Sunday with our parish Respect Life representatives, we honored doctors and pharmacists in East River South Dakota who, as part of their practice, will not prescribe contraceptives to their patients nor fill those prescriptions.
Starting with the next issue of The Bishop’s Bulletin, we will honor them publicly and invite you to let us know who they are. We have some names but want to honor all those Catholics in the diocese who follow the teachings of our faith even if it might result in the loss of personal gain.
Last spring as I was visiting some of our parish communities under fifty families, I noticed three significant factors contributing to their decline: 1) Where there were eight farm families in the past there are now two or three. 2) Every time seven farm families move off the land a business on main street closes. 3) Our parishes have fewer and fewer children because of an aging population and the fact many couples are practicing contraception.
I believe it is because of a contraceptive mentality that many people today are losing their faith and have poorly formed consciences. This is true not only in South Dakota, but also around the world. If one can disagree with the church on contraception and no one reminds you that is a sin, then you can think whatever you want about the life issues.
In theory, Italy is a Catholic country, but the birth rate is so low that they are not even staying even. Immigrants moving in are continuing to have large families and will soon be the largest single group. Italy could change from being a Christian country to being a Moslem country within the next fifty years.
The decline in the number of children is a direct result of cohabitation, contraception, abortion and divorce. This goes against Sacred Scripture and the church’s traditional understanding that large families are a sign of God’s blessing and the parent’s generosity.
I am aware of one situation where a “friend” told a young mother after the third child to have her tubes tied. This “spirit of the day” does not see a child as a gift from God but rather an unfair burden. What a limited and selfish view of life is presented in this type of thinking.
At the Second Vatican Council in the document “Gaudium Et Spes” the bishops said, “Let all be convinced that human life and the duty of transmitting it are not limited by the horizons of this life only: their true evaluation and full significance can be understood only in reference to man’s eternal destiny.” (par. 51)
“In the vocation of marriage husband and wife share in the creative power and fatherhood of God, and cooperate with the love of God the creator and are in a certain sense its interpreters to the modern world. While there is nothing wrong with a couple spacing their children through abstinence, they must examine their conscience to make sure the motive is not selfishness, but rather in conformity with the generosity appropriate to responsible parenthood.” (CCC # 2368)
Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality. (Humanae Vitae, par. 16) Pope John Paul II has done much to help us understand this in his work on the Theology of the Body. He gives new insight about the dignity and the beauty of the marital act.
As I shared with you in my pastoral letter on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, “The church affirms that sexual intercourse has two inseparable meanings: unitive and procreative. By the first, a couple’s love is symbolized, sustained, and strengthened. By the second, they stand open to the possibility of cooperating with God in the creation of a new person. The procreative end of the act, because it is intrinsic to the very nature of the act, cannot be separated from the unitive without injuring God’s design for human sexuality. For this reason, any deliberate interference in the integrity of the sexual act, which precludes the possibility of procreation, is contrary to the moral law.”
It does not take a rocket scientist to begin to understand how contraception and the mentality that went with it made it easier to view other issues life-related in a positive light: abortion - just another form of birth control, cohabitation - selfish pleasure with no responsibility, separating procreation from sexual expression - gives the green light to every kind of sexual perversion (including internet issues) and allows the culture of death to view it as legitimate and legal.
As Pope John Paul II said in his encyclical Letter on the Family, “An internal connection exists between the love-giving and life-giving aspects of a husband’s and wife’s interpersonal sharing. While contraceptive practices violate it, natural means of birth regulation respect it. When spouses make use of the God-given phases of fertility and infertility, ‘they are acting as ministers of God’s plan, and benefit from their sexuality according to the original dynamism of total self-giving, without manipulation or alteration.”
Finally, there are some couples that have been very generous and open to God’s will in their relationship but have no children. I thank you for your strong faith and witness. I share your sadness, and I am especially happy with the joy some of you have found through adoption and the generous way you serve others. Your marriage has a special spiritual fruit, which gives life to the Body of Christ.