By John-Henry Westen
POTTA, India, July 27, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – After the harrowing adventures related to last year’s trip to India to speak at the Divine Retreat Centre’s Power 2006 Youth Conference, the good Fathers who run the giant retreat centre asked me to once again address the annual Youth Conference and associated Couples Conference.
Power 2007 was like its inaugural predecessor a huge success with thousands of youth in attendance in addition to hundreds of couples, who took part in a separate retreat at the same time at the centre.
My wife Dianne and our youngest child Lucas joined me again for the long trek to India which was thankfully missing many of the mishaps which transpired on our first such trip last summer. (to read about those adventures click here: https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/aug/06081803.html )
Upon our arrival we took a few days to adjust to the climate change and the 10-hour difference from Toronto.
My talks on life, family and Christian sexuality were assisted immensely by the witness of my wife, the mother of our seven children, the eldest of whom is eleven. While she chose not to give talks, despite my pleadings, her witness was powerful. She gladly answered dozens of queries received after each of my presentations which usually referred to our married and family life.
A few weeks prior to leaving on July 10 Dianne had a miscarriage and we lost our eighth child. This painful experience served a purpose at the conference as my wife permitted me to publicly discuss this family episode despite it being so recently endured.
I shared our miscarriage experience in a pro-life talk noting that many may consider the miscarriage of an early (seven week) eighth child to be inconsequential. For our family that was definitely not the case.
A few months earlier our children missed having a little baby in our family since the youngest, Lucas, had now grown beyond that stage. They began praying that we would be blessed with another child. I explained to the youth in India that the subsequent announcement to the children of Dianne’s pregnancy brought joy and a wonderful sentiment of prayers answered.
The later news of the baby’s death brought sadness. One of the older children, Joshua, a particularly sensitive child, wept about it. But we were all consoled with the truth that little Stefano, as we named him, was now with God and waiting and hoping for all the rest of us to join him in paradise.
The childrens’ sadness was turned to joy with the thought of a sibling in heaven rooting for them. Their younger brother, who they are confident they will meet after death, served also to bring the reality of the afterlife closer to home.
And so I told my listeners that it is the same with babies who have been aborted. They are with their Creator, they forgive what was done to them and hope for repentance and the reunification with their earthly parents in the heavenly Kingdom. I explained that God always wants to forgive and that the angels are ready to rejoice when forgiveness is sought and lives turned away from sin.
After this talk I was approached by a young woman in her early twenties who revealed that she had had an abortion over a year ago. She said that while she had been able to confess the sexual impropriety she had not been able to bring herself to confess her abortion.
She felt compelled to talk to me about this serious burden after the talk, she said.
She had told me she could not bring herself to confess her abortion in confession to a priest although she very much wanted to. It occurred to me that she might first be able to write down this confession on paper and I asked her if she was ready to at least do that. I gave her a pen and paper and she wrote “God forgive me. I had an abortion”.
With that first important step done I was then able to bring her to an experienced priest who heard her confession.
The following day the young woman approached me with tears of joy telling me that following her confession she had joyfully received Holy Communion for the first time in a year.
Praise God!, I thought as I walked away. If nothing else happens here, it was worth the trip for that experience alone.
There were many other blessings and challenges.
After my first talk on Christian sexuality I told the youth to submit questions, if they had any. I figured there may be a few questions some rude jokes perhaps. But what I got was a large stack of very serious and well-thought-out questions about sexuality.
The questions brought home the truth of what Kerala Cardinal Varkey Vitheryathil told LifeSiteNews.com reporter Steve Jalsevac last year. “Loose Catholic doctrine coming from Western countries” has led Kerala Catholics to assume non-Catholic beliefs, he said.
And while Indian youth are exposed via television and the Internet to Western hyper-sexualized culture, parents, and religious leaders are loathe to speak about sexuality due to cultural tradition. “See, talking about sex, sex education is rather poor in India,” explained the Cardinal. “This is something very private, you know. Nobody talks about sex, you know even among the Hindus we do not talk about the plain truths about sex and the sex life,” he said. “Parents never say a word to their children about sex.” (see the full interview with the Cardinal here: https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/06061507.html )
There were so many questions they had to be categorized into subjects and answered in themes in the next talk. They demonstrated that India’s youth suffer the same effects of distorted sexuality as those in the West.
Unlike young adults in the West however, there was among these youth a seeming universal eagerness to learn the truth and abide by it or at least attempt to. Beyond the talks, young adults surrounded my wife and I (usually the women with my wife and the men with me) asking questions. After about three hours I had to cut off one such session with four young men.
The friendliness, courtesy, respect and interest of the Indian youth were truly remarkable. The hunger for truth especially related to these subjects on which they rarely receive teaching should be a motivator for Church leadership around the world to encourage open and honest discussion in the area of life, family and Christian sexuality.