Dropping the ball on NFP Awareness Week....

Failure by priests/deacons in the Greater Philly/Trenton area to utilize the teaching moment of NFP Awareness Week is shameful. It certainly helps to explain the abysmally poor understanding of what the Church proclaims about marriage/family/sexuality, the need for conscience protections, and the need to defend marriage. The recent thoughts of one young writer seem quite pertinent:

"Our priests didn’t preach and our teachers didn’t teach because contraception was the unmentionable sin-that-wasn’t. Why risk alienating parishioners (and donors) by condemning The Pill and other sundry methods?....

"So our congregations sat comfortably in their pews, undisturbed by truth. Let’s own this fact: Silence paved the way for Catholics’ ‘progressive’ march from yesterday’s contraception to today’s same-sex marriage...

"The latest Barna Group polling shows that only 50% of practicing Catholics define marriage as the union of one man and one woman....

"Gallup data shows that 68% of Catholics overall say that gay and lesbian sexual relations are morally acceptable, while just 29% believes those relations are morally wrong. Even among weekly church-goers, almost one-third believes homosexual sex is moral....

"If silence paved the way for Catholics’ ‘progressive’ march from yesterday’s contraception to today’s same-sex marriage, then it’s not hard to see the remedy. Catholics, be not afraid to teach, preach, and live the truth—especially the truth about sex and contraception ( http://catholicstand.com/breaking-silence-catholics-contraception-and-same-sex-marriage/).