8/31/2018

Hitting the nail on the head

Janet Smith sums it all up:

To those who have eyes to see, it is not hard to see that the widespread embrace of contraception leads to approval of homosexuality. After all, those who accept contraception hold that respecting the procreative possibility of the sexual act is not essential to the moral performance of that action. Thus why not homosexuality and a whole host of deviant sexual actions? The sexual abuse crisis in the Church was largely a crisis of homosexual priests exploiting young men. How many others did not prey on young men, but have lived double lives? Their ways of thinking and behaving surely permeated their priesthood in many ways.
What happened with McCarrick explains a lot. Over the last 50 years those priests and laity who have tried to promote Humanae vitae and to teach methods of Natural Family Planning have regularly been astonished and demoralized by how little support they have received from bishops. For decades the family life offices were dominated by dissenters, by those who taught couples in marriage preparation that using contraception was not a sin if their consciences were not troubled.

The entire corpus of the church must be living the virtue of Chastity in order for it to be chaste. The consequences of so many couples failing to be chaste in their marriages is so many priests failing to be chaste. Why should we hold them to such a standard in their vocation when we do not hold ourselves to the same standard?

Zero-tolerance toward couples who fail in their vows? Not likely, but we should be asking where is the vociferous reaction to couples who fail to practice their vow to accept children lovingly from God and bring them up according to the faith.

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