Fr. Bob Stellini, saving marriages one cycle at a time.
Posted by bob on 27th July 2008
Today Father Bob Stellini, Associate Pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, Diocese of Memphis, Cordova, TN gave a rousing homily on Humane Vitae and Holy Mother Church’s teaching on contraception.
I struggle sometimes with faith because I am so convicted by the Church’s teachings, the beauty of our celebration in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the wonder and awe I get in the presence of the Eucharist, and the amazing nature of God seen through other people. Often however I’m left wondering why people do not know the faith, don’t understand the Mass, do not know the teachings of the Church, or even know the Bible for that matter. How can we build the Church if the people are not taught?
Let me be clear and state that I’m not saying homilies that do not bash church teaching down your throat are bad. That’s not it at all. Many clergy give wonderfully engaging homilies and I am spiritually uplifted by these messages. However, sometimes, as they say, I just want some down home cookin! Sometimes I don’t want to hear for the 245 time this year that God loves me, I want to hear what I’m supposed to do about it, concretely. And more importantly, I want to hear the things I’m reading and seeing in Holy Mother Church.
I listened earlier this year to some talks given by a Priest at a conference. This Priest completely skewed what our Holy Father has said and what the Church teaches, and rather shared his own opinion. This is sad. People are following this man based on his opinion, not because of God’s will or what Christ’s Church teaches.
Fr. Bob made a very profound statement today in his homily. He said (paraphrase) that when Humane Vitae arrived many Priests told people to follow their conscience with regard to a “grave reason” or other reasons to use birth control; however these same Priests did not tell the people of God how to Form their conscience.
He also stated the facts that contraception withholds part of the person from the unitive act of marriage and damages the unity of the man and woman. He discussed the after affects of allowing wide spread contraception: legalized abortion, moral degredation and lack of respect for women who have been made an object of man’s satisfaction. These are all contained within Humane Vitae.
For a Priest to stand up and proclaim such a controversial teaching in a concise and deliberate manner is wonderful. How will the people of God know what the Church teaches if the Clergy do not preach it? I ask you this; does the average Catholic read the Bible, or Church documents?
It is necessary to form the faithful that we review. Why is it when baseball and football teams begin losing games that coaches go back to basics? If we can’t do the core skills well, how can we ever win?
It is the same in faith. As Catholics, if we can’t handle the basic beliefs and teachings of the Church, we can never be the Church Christ calls us to be. And second, if we don’t understand the basics of the order of creation as God intended, we can never have a society that is ordered. Ask yourself this, why do sooo many people protest the killing of people in Iraq, but ignore the killing of millions of babies here at home? We have to go back to the basics and start a new boot camp for our conciences as a society. Until we respect life at conception, society will never care about men with guns dying in another country.
I applaud you Fr. Bob. You are on my list of hero’s for the Church in Memphis and throughout the world.
UPDATE: Ryan sent me an article that I’m going to post here as well that has more great info on this topic:
“The CatholiCity Message
Volume XII, Number 7
July 25, 2008
Dear CatholiCity Citizen,
We have only one topic today, which marks the 40th anniversary of the promulgation of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, Humanae Vitae, on July 25, 1968. We assume our readers know this watershed encyclical rejected the premise that the use of artificial means to avoid conception was anything other than an objectively immoral act.
THE AGE OF SEXUAL SLAVERY
Did you know that every major Christian denomination in the world (and virtually every citizen in every country on the planet) viewed the use of artificial contraception as immoral until 1930, when the Anglican Church of England officially changed its teaching at the Lambeth Conference?
With the collapse of the Christian bulwark against the idea that sexual activity could be seperated from the responsibilities of bearing children (and ultimately, that sexuality would be seperated from exclusivity within marriage), what was regarded as grossly unnatural and morally repugnant to the “man on the street” gradually became considered “natural” to most citizens of developed countries by the end of the 1970s. The age of sexual slavery is upon us, and we fear, has not reached its nadir, as the attacks upon what legally defines marriage itself gain in popularity and ferocity.
In 2008, 78 years later, and a mere “blink” of the eye of history, the Catholic Church stands alone in this foundational defense of the natural dignity of humanity itself, and sadly, many of her own members do not stand with her. Pope Paul prophetically made four dire predictions for society if this teaching was ignored, and tragically, all four have come true. We posted Mary Eberstadt’s summarizing article from First Things on CatholiCity.com this week:
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=6262
ONE MORE SOUL
If you are married and remain faithfully open and responsible to life, we applaud your courage, empathize with the challenges, and understand your joy, especially if you have been blessed with children.
If you have struggled to adhere to the teaching or are intimidated by the massive and implacable cultural obsession to separate sexual activity from the gift and responsibility of bearing and rearing children, you are not alone. Perhaps you sincerely and honestly do not see the truth of the teaching.
We humbly and gently invite you to listen to the most loving, powerful, non-judgemental, and popular explanation of the Church’s teaching ever recorded, Dr. Janet E. Smith’s “Contraception, Why Not?” or her recent “Contraception, Why Not? New and Revised.”
Both CDs are available free-of-charge from One More Soul, which offers an extensive variety of books, CDs, newsletters, and pamphlets on this important subject, including an online directory of doctors who do not prescribe contraceptives.
For a free CD of the classic “Contraception, Why Not?” or the New and Revised version, go here, respectively:
http://www.omsoul.com/catalog/index.php?target=products&product_id=531
http://www.omsoul.com/catalog/index.php?product_id=709&target=products
EIGHT HOURS OF CHRISTOPHER WEST FOR UNDER FOUR BUCKS
For a fuller, inspiring, comprehensive, and absolutely fascinating explanation of the Church’s teaching on marriage and sexuality, we heartily recommend the Gift Foundation’s amazing 10-CD set on Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, “Naked Without Shame,” available for only $3.90:
http://www.giftfoundation.org
THE MARY FOUNDATION’S ROLE
Many of you already know that CatholiCity.com and our parent organization, the Mary Foundation, never take any compensation for promoting these other wonderful apostolates, but we are proudly humbled to acknowledge that both One More Soul (which even offers “Contraception, Why Not?” for $1 each in quantities of 100 or more) and the Gift Foundation actively adapted our “free materials” philosophy to their own unique missions. Of course, we offer our own free CD by Christopher West, an introduction to the Theology of the Body with a sacramental emphasis, “Marriage and the Eucharist,” which can be ordered here. If you haven’t heard it yet, you’re in for a real treat:
http://www.catholicity.com/cds/west.html
A PRAYER TOGETHER
Let us all thank God for the gift of life, tens of thousands of us together, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…
“Dear Father in Heaven, for each of us who raise our hearts to You on this wonderful day, there are two others, our mothers and fathers. If they be here on earth, we thank you for them and for their love, however imperfect or noble, and ask you to provide for all their spiritual and temporal needs, immediately, and with great generosity, in all things, great and small, and in all things beyond all things. If they have passed from this earth, we ask you to bring them close in your loving, fatherly embrace, and if they are already saints, we ask for their intercession, and the intercession of their angels, in every second of every minute of every day of every month of every year until we join them with You. Amen.”
QUOTES OF THE WEEK
“The sole purpose of life in time is to gain merit for life in eternity.”
Saint Augustine
“Young people are threatened by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediate satisfaction of every desire.”
Pope John Paul II
“It is better to remain silent than to speak the truth ill-humoredly, and so spoil an excellent dish by covering it with bad sauce.”
J. P. Camus
We’ll say good-bye here, and only note that the last quote by Camus is a principle strived for in all CatholiCity Messages, and we ask for your forgiveness for all the times we have fallen short. We remain…
With Immaculate Mary,
Your Friends at CatholiCity”
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