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(LifeSiteNews) – On this week’s episode of The Bishop Strickland Show, Bishop Joseph Strickland reflects on Pope St. Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae and the predictions the pontiff made about the legalization of contraception, arguing that society is in a worse state than the Pope thought.
Offering remarks on the predictions that Paul VI made in the encyclical, such as a “lowering of moral standards,” “marital infidelity,” and the like, Bishop Strickland remarks that the encyclical remains “pertinent,” and states, “We think we’re so smart and so sophisticated, and we’re losing it. And all of this transgender stuff and all of the ‘how do we identify today and maybe it’s different than tomorrow’ … It goes beyond even what Paul VI predicted.”
“[Paul VI’s] predictions have all come true in devastating ways … in society, really throughout the world, and certainly in this nation,” he observes.
His Excellency also observes, along with Paul VI, that governments will receive the power to intervene in family life: “The government starts to interfere in families because families are a wreck, and so the government takes over.”
Strickland also offers commentary on two of his tweets, one featuring a quotation from Cardinal Robert Sarah, maintaining that the unity of the Church must be “built around the truth of the Catholic doctrine and moral teaching of the Church,” and another by Joshua Charles, quoting Pope Benedict XVI, warning that the greatest attacks on the Church come from within and form a “Passion of the Church.”
Commenting on the quote by Cardinal Sarah, Strickland says that “you don’t have unity without Jesus Christ; He’s the principle of unity and everything that He’s taught us.” His Excellency also opines that the reason why the Church “is probably more fragmented than it has been in a long time” is because people have sought to abandon Christ’s doctrine, and thus the principle of unity, noting that disunity in the Church comes from the desire to change teaching.
“The unity is a wreck because we’ve forgotten that the only Principle of unity is Jesus Christ, His teachings, and everything that the Church is,” he observes. “The Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, that oneness is in Jesus Christ.”
Remarking on the thoughts of Benedict XVI, Strickland notes that Martin Luther was a priest, and therefore that his “attack” on the Church began from within.
“Those attacking may eventually leave [the Church], but they do a lot of damage before they leave,” he says. “Instead of just saying, ‘I don’t believe in this’ and leaving, for whatever reasons they tend to stay around long enough to do a lot of damage. And then usually they finally leave because the Truth doesn’t change.”
Strickland closes the episode offering a meditation on a book by biblical scholar and Catholic convert from Protestantism Dr. John Bergsma, based on his book Jesus and the Old Testament Roots of the Priesthood.
Meditating on Bergsma’s remark on the translation of Genesis that Adam was told to guard the garden, Strickland says that it reminds him of the role of bishops and fathers.
“As a bishop, I’m supposed to guard … the household of the Church,” Strickland remarks, extending the role of guardian to fathers. Emphasizing that the role of fathers extends from the physical to the spiritual, he says that what is “probably” the most important guardianship is to protect the home from spiritual enemies, citing the internet, books, and the like.
“It’s a tough job to just be a man in the world, with that role of, like Adam, guarding against evil, guarding against false messages, guarding against anything that will harm the family, or the parish, or the diocese that we’re charged with guarding,” Strickland states.
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