Opinion
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March 5, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) — To the extent with which the Church goes along with this secular agenda on contraception, it is heading towards destruction. It will of course never disappear completely, for the gates of Hell will never prevail against it, but in Europe it could be reduced to a tiny minority, as has happened in past centuries in North Africa and Turkey.

In practice the Church, especially in developed countries such as in Europe and North America, has to a large extent gone along with the secular agenda. Blessed Paul VI’s landmark 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae was greeted with widespread rejection, above all by moral theologians. Several Bishops’ Conferences rushed to publish commentaries on it, which were understood by the faithful to mean that they could ignore the encyclical. And that is what has happened in practice.

The Church is now reaping the fruits of nearly half a century of disobedience to its moral teaching. Contraception is destroying the Church! There are too few children. Christians are dying out. There are too few vocations to the priesthood and to consecrated life. These vocations often come from large families.

Christians too have abortions and suffer from Post Abortion Syndrome and broken relationships. They use IVF, not understanding the problems connected with it. They suffer marriage breakdown, because they too use contraception. They are subject to the same Godless sex education as non-Christians and are offered inadequate catechesis and marriage preparation.

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It is not sufficient for the bishops to address only the symptoms of the malaise affecting marriages and families; they must address the cause of the problems so that with the passage of time broken marriages will become something exceptional rather than a mass phenomenon. If the pot is boiling over, turn off the heat! It must therefore become a priority in catechesis and marriage preparation to promote chastity both before and within marriage. It is necessary as far as possible to shield young children from the gender ideology, amoral sex education and pornography and instead teach them premarital chastity at the appropriate age. For older youth groups, students and in marriage preparation it is necessary to teach marital chastity.

To this end effective NFP is a useful tool, and for most couples in practice a necessary tool. Will they accept it? It is of course necessary to dispel the myths such as its supposed ineffectiveness or that it does not work for women with irregular cycles. It is also necessary to explain that it does not usually require heroic abstinence. Since almost all couples desire a happy life-long marriage, the negative effect of contraception on their relationship with the real possibility of marriage breakdown needs to be explained, and the reality that chaste marriages are generally happy and stable.

Stable and functioning Catholic marriages and families are by their very existence a means of evangelisation, because they are naturally attractive. People will want to know how they manage it and what their secret is.

In summary: the acceptance of the teaching of Humanae Vitae is a necessary condition for the restoration of stable marriages and healthy families within the Church, and a precondition for evangelisation.