Saint Pope Paul VI prophetically warned the world in 1968 about the serious consequences that would follow if there was wide-spread disobedience to the God-given meaning of human sexuality, marriage and family. Find below Section 17 of his Encyclical Letter, Humanae Vitae – On Human Life.
Responsible persons can be still more easily convinced of the solid grounds on which the teaching of the Church in this field is based, if they stop to reflect upon the consequences of the use of the methods of artificial birth regulation. Let them consider, first of all, how wide and easy a road would thus be opened to conjugal infidelity and to a general lowering of morality. One does not need much experience to know human weakness and to understand that human beings – especially the young, who are so vulnerable on this point – have need of encouragement to be faithful to the moral law, and must not be offered an easy means to evade its observance. It can also be feared that the man who becomes used to contraceptive practices, may in the end lose respect for his wife, and no longer caring about her physical and psychological well-being, will come to the point of considering her a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer his respected and beloved companion.
Consider also the dangerous weapon that would thus be placed in the hands of those public authorities who have no concern for the requirements of morality. Who could blame a government for applying, as a solution to the problems of the community, those means acknowledged to be permissible for a married couple in solving a family problem. Who will prevent rulers from favoring, and even imposing upon their people, the method of contraception they judge to be the most effective, if they should consider this to be necessary? In this way, men, while wishing to avoid the individual, family or social difficulties they encounter in observing the divine law, would come to place at the mercy of the intervention of public authorities the most personal and most private of conjugal intimacy. (HV-17)
Next week I will explain Why dissent from the teaching in Humane Vitae is a Root Cause of our society’s most devastating problems.
 
Blessings, Fr. John 

 Sr. Lucia, one of the seers of Fatima, revealed that Satan’s attack on humanity in the end times would focus on the destruction of marriage and family. The family is the fundamental cell of society and the domestic church. By attacking marriage and family, Satan is able to weaken society and the church at its very foundations. One alarming survey showed that 98% of men in prison were raised in families with no father in the home.
Let’s go back 51 years to the publication of, “Humanae Vitae – On Human Life,” by Saint Pope Paul VI. There was a lot of pressure from the media and modern society for the Church to change its teaching against using contraceptives, like the new birth-control pill, in order to help couples plan their families and avoid unwanted pregnancies. All hell broke loose when Saint Paul VI reaffirmed the Church’s teaching that it was an intrinsic evil to deliberately sterilize the “marriage act” through chemical, barrier, or surgical methods. Providentially, some modern and highly effective “natural” methods for avoiding, or, achieving, pregnancy, were developed at this time (late fifties) cf. the “Billings Method.” These methods, were based on a woman being able to accurately track her days of fertility by the physical signs in her body. Given a responsible and unselfish reason to avoid pregnancy, the couple could abstain from the marriage act during the relatively few days when the woman’s body was fertile.
Saint Paul VI prophetically warned the world about the serious consequences that would follow if there was wide-spread disobedience to the God-given meaning of human sexuality, marriage and family that he had re-affirmed in the Encyclical Letter, Humanae Vitae.
Next week I will share Saint Paul VI’s prophetic statements.   
 
Blessings, Fr. John 
 

What is a good way for a family to pray together? Mary, Our Lady of Lourdes, says, “Pray the Rosary daily.” The rosary is a “clock” that helps us take time to meditate on the principal mysteries of our salvation. The Rosary helps us take time to receive the many graces God wants to pour into our hearts for the sanctification of our lives and our perfection in Charity. What follows is an excerpt from the journal of a Benedictine monk, from a recently published book called, In Sinu Jesu. This Latin title refers to the Last Supper where, John, the beloved disciple, lays his head “on the bosom of Jesus.” The words that follow are spoken to the priest (and to us) in the voice of Jesus.
There is no problem or difficulty that cannot be solved or resolved by faithful persevering recourse to My Mother’s most holy Rosary. The Rosary is my Mother’s gift to the poor and to the simple, to the little ones who alone are capable of hearing the Gospel in all its purity and of responding to it with a generous heart. It is to such as these – the child-like and the weak, the poor and the trusting – that the Rosary is given. It is to such as these that the Rosary belongs.
There is no suffering that cannot be borne peacefully, so long as a soul is praying the Rosary. Through the Rosary, all the grace and power of My mysteries passes through My Mother’s Immaculate Heart into the hearts of the little ones who invoke her, repeating the angel’s “Ave” over and over again. There are illnesses that can be cured through the Rosary. There are clouds of darkness and confusion that only the Rosary can disperse, and this because it is My Mother’s favorite prayer, a prayer that originated in the heights of heaven and was carried to earth by My Archangel, a prayer echoed and amplified in the Church through the ages, a prayer loved by all my saints, a prayer of disarming power and of immense depth. … Listen, then, to My Mother’s plea in so many places. Listen to her. Take her plea to heart, pray her Rosary and, for you as for her, My Father will do wondrous things.
 
Rosary Blessings, Fr. John 

In June of 1979, (now Saint) Pope John Paul II returned to Poland to retrieve a manuscript he had been working on since 1974. In September of 1979 he began a series of 129 Wednesday Audiences that would share the contents of this manuscript with the world. His original title for the manuscript was, Male and Female He Created Them (Gen.1:27). An alternate title given to the work by its author is Human Love in the Divine Plan. The work has now been published in English with the title, Man and Woman He Created Them, A Theology of the Body.
 
In July of 1968, (now Saint) Pope Paul VI published, Humanae Vitae – On the Regulation of Human Births. In the face of the new technology of a hormonal birth-control pill (approved by the FDA in 1960), and mounting pressure from many persons both within and outside the Church, this Papal Encyclical set forth in clear terms that it is intrinsically evil to deliberately sterilize the marriage act. The dissent from this teaching by some bishops and many theologians in most of Europe, Canada and the U.S. was great. As a consequence, present day surveys show that 80 to 90 percent of “Western” Catholics do not follow this teaching of the Church.
 
Humanae Vitae inspired Cardinal Karol Wotyla to use his philosophical and theological gifts to provide a total vision of the human person. It is reported that, over a four-year period, he wrote the entire manuscript, now called, Theology of the Body, in the Presence of the Blessed Sacrament. George Weigel, author of a three-volume biography of St. John Paul II, describes TOB as the “antidote to the porno- revolution and the culture of death.” George Weigel predicts that TOB is like a time-bomb ready to go off during the Twenty-First Century.
I thank God that in St. Joachim Parish the time-bomb of Truth and Love in TOB has been going off for years now in our Marriage Preparation Ministry and our Youth Ministry. We are grateful to all who help with these important ministries.
 
Blessings, Fr. John