Did you ever notice that when people take issue with Catholic teaching, rarely does it concern the Hypostatic Union, the Vatican’s guidelines on road rage, or the Vatican Conference on Extraterrestrial Life? No, those things with which they take issue bear directly or vicariously on their sexual lives — homosexuality, same-sex “marriage,” premarital sex, adultery, contraception, masturbation, population control, abortion, divorce, remarriage, in vitro fertilization, etc. Remember Our Lord’s words on this: "What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man." Recall too that, as Fr. Charles Curran has reminded us, dissent from Humanae Vitae “was paradigmatic of the dissent in all specific moral questions.” My advice to those who still doubt in our sexually-befuddled world is that it is a fatal error not to observe “how Lucifer actually works and why he is so intent on perverting our sexuality.” Indeed, a Catholic understanding of human sexuality gives us “a glimpse of the ‘great mystery’ of God’s plan to unite all things in Christ.”
“ F ive years ago, I would have been afraid of saying anything like what the pope said in his [recent] interview,” the Rev. Tom Reese told Sally Quin . “I’m ecstatic. I haven’t been this hopeful about the church in decades....” “It’s fun to be a religion reporter again. For a while it felt like being on the crime beat. It’s fun to be Catholic again.” George Weigel has raised the question of whether or not Fr. Tom has been paying attention throughout the last quarter of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st. Among his findings on the legacies of Pope Francis' predecessors: Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J. millions of adults have been baptized as or entered into full communion with the Catholic Church. new forms of campus ministry in the mold of JPII's "New Evangelization" have developed across the United States. Catholic-studies programs have bloomed on genuinely Catholic campuses across the U.S. the Church has produced the most c...
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