In this part of the letter, the pope interprets the story of Cain and Abel. Then he unfolds his understanding of the “Culture of Death.”
WARNING: JP II presents us with an examination of conscience here which will indict just about everybody. Remember that God is merciful, He forgives the penitent, and He bings good out of evil.
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The Church welcomes everyone. Christ loves everyone in His Sacred Heart. He died on the Cross for everyone, so that everyone can get to heaven.
That said, the Lord has clearly indicated in the gospel that the Church will encounter conflicts. Situations will arise in which we have to shake the dust from our feet and move on.
Of course, love must always motivate us, even when we shake the dust off.
I think we can safely propose that genuine love moves us to affirm two principles that bring us into profound conflict with many of our contemporaries.
We can stand with patience and peace on these two principles. Their truth can be established by arguments from every possible rational point-of-view. We would be fools if we ever thought that these principles could “change.” They can’t change. So we stand on them and move into the future with confidence.
Our contemporaries do not openly deny these principles, so much as they obliquely hold them against us as being objectionable.
The two principles I have in mind are:
Exodus is a good book of the Bible for spiritual reading during Lent.
A lot of us have heard the canard: “The Catholic Church has a hang-up when it comes to sex.”
If you hear this while you are on your way out the door to Mass today, just smile patiently.
You are no prude. You are on your way to celebrate one of the Church’s biggest feast days, the day when a man and his wife had sex, and the world was changed forever.
We are not afraid of the way God made us, male and female. We say that it is good for men and women to get married and make babies.
The peddlers of the contraceptive culture of death–they are the prudes. Their stratagems try to turn sex into something shameful.
Sexual sin is shameful, sure enough. But the Church does not have feast days for sins, and today is the feast day of the conception of a baby.
Today is the day when God, St. Joachim, and St. Ann–together–gave us our Lady. She was conceived the old-fashioned way. God made a new Garden of Eden in St. Ann’s womb. The baby was pure from the first moment of her tiny, beautiful existence!
REDSKINS ADDENDUM
…continuing with the P&BD theme of telling it like it is, here is a Chris Cooley quote for you:
“We just sucked. Right now we suck as an offense.”
Father Mark White Blog 