Fr Longenecker has an interesting article up today about the relationship between our contracepting culture and the vocations crisis.

His thoughts on this are very close to mine...

We have experienced a radical change in the deeper understanding and expectations of marriage. Before the sexual revolution, a young Catholic boy or girl experienced a family context in which being a husband or wife, father or mother, would have demanded a natural kind of self sacrifice.

...

It was within this context of self-sacrificial family life that a young man or woman's vocation to the priesthood or religious life would have been formed. The young person therefore did not question the demand for a life of self-sacrifice; it was assumed that this was the foundation of a good life. The question, then, was which manner of sacrifice is best for the individual: Dying to self through marriage and family, or dying to self through a religious vocation?

Now, because of artificial contraception, the whole underlying assumptions and expectations about marriage have shifted. Marriage is no longer a way to give all, but a way to have it all. Therefore, when a young person today considers a religious vocation, they are not choosing between different paths of self-sacrifice; they are choosing between a life that seems to have it all and a life that seems to have nothing. They must choose between a home in the suburbs, 2.5 nice children, and a double income or total self denial. The choice is between a familiar form of hedonism or an inexplicable form of heroism.

[link]

The priestly vocation crisis is a natural consequence of the marriage crisis because like it or not, the priesthood depends on marriage. Priests come from families.

It is difficult to think of anything that could more seriously undermine the sacrament of marriage than contraception. In marriage two people give themselves physically and spiritually to one another, the physical act of having sex is a sacramental. It is a sign and a symbol of this union.

Contraception physically breaks the sign and symbol of the sacrament. This is the equivalent of baptism without the water, or spitting out the communion host. I am fairly sure that if you spat out the body of Christ your priest would have something to say about it, yet if you treat the body of your spouse in a similar way he will probably have nothing to say about it.

Bishop Drainey has spoken extensively about the way everybody seems to think that priests are going to come from other families in other parishes.

Perhaps the time has come for him to start speaking about the way that everybody seems to think that people are going to come from other families.

My Story

I know quite a few people who work at St Mary's College in Hull so I can tell this story and the person concerned can remain anonymous.

They were in school one day when somebody enters the room and says they are from Connexions. For anybody who isn't familiar, Connexions is the UK Governments careers advice service. Anyway, person from Connexions starts to put posters in the room. My friend looks at the posters. There are a few about jobs but there is also one about always using a condom. In a Catholic school. Great. My friend takes it down.

Jackie Parkes Story

So I go into parent's evening last night. Comment on the fabulous Newman display in the entrance hall apparently borrowed from the Oratory. As I go in the hall notice a Connexions stand with 2 women seated & various booklets. Make a mental plan to check on way out.

So out we go & I stop by & ask ' Excuse me can you tell me if yr Connexions service is adapted to the needs of this being a Catholic School?' Well they were dumbstruck.. 'what do you mean?'.

So I pick up the main Connexions booklet.. 'your daughter should have had one of these' I said she did & we sent it back to school because of the information contained in it & the school apologised saying it shouldn't have been sent out!'. I asked could I keep their copy...'err no!'. So I pick up another booklet..I don't think this was Connexions..so I flip to the back & read in a very LOUD voice ( by this time Mary & Rosie had legged it!)..' Marie Stopes, Brook Adivsory, Family Planning Association..descs of abortion & contraceptive services..etc'

The 2 women didn't know where to put themselves..went pale in fact..so I walk off with that one..catch the Head Teacher on way out ' can I have a minute? ' sure..' can u just take a look at this?' HT ' Oh I'm really sorry...that's the NEW girl'. Yeah right!!

Conclusion

Connextions are the UK Governments 'careers advice service'. As part of this careers advice they hand out free condoms and promote contraception. UK Catholic schools welcome them in with open arms - Connextions promise not to promote contraception in the school but then, oh, sorry, oops, they keep forgetting.

Even if Connexions had a perfect track record for never accidentally promoting Contraception in Catholic Schools, what the Schools are doing is allowing Connexions to promote themselves to students as a great place to turn for all kinds of advice. They give them a national free phone number to call (where I am quite sure they don't ask if you were referred by a Catholic school) and there is a website to visit.

The Connexions website has links through to the lovely Sexperience website from Channel 4 and r u thinking? featuring this lovely page.

If we have a proper Catholic school I expect that the governers will mention this and the school will bend over backwards to provide an alternative careers service, perhaps in partnership with the Diocesan Vocations people.

Don't count on it.

Consequences of Artificial Methods:

Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.

Remember to Sign the LiveChastely Promise

Recourse to Infertile Periods:

If therefore there are well-grounded reasons for spacing births, arising from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife, or from external circumstances, the Church teaches that married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile, thus controlling birth in a way which does not in the least offend the moral principles which We have just explained.

Neither the Church nor her doctrine is inconsistent when she considers it lawful for married people to take advantage of the infertile period but condemns as always unlawful the use of means which directly prevent conception, even when the reasons given for the later practice may appear to be upright and serious. In reality, these two cases are completely different. In the former the married couple rightly use a faculty provided them by nature. In the later they obstruct the natural development of the generative process. It cannot be denied that in each case the married couple, for acceptable reasons, are both perfectly clear in their intention to avoid children and wish to make sure that none will result. But it is equally true that it is exclusively in the former case that husband and wife are ready to abstain from intercourse during the fertile period as often as for reasonable motives the birth of another child is not desirable. And when the infertile period recurs, they use their married intimacy to express their mutual love and safeguard their fidelity toward one another. In doing this they certainly give proof of a true and authentic love.

Remember to Sign the LiveChastely Promise

Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one, or that such intercourse would merge with procreative acts of past and future to form a single entity, and so be qualified by exactly the same moral goodness as these. Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good," it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it - in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general. Consequently, it is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong.

Remember to Sign the LiveChastely Promise

One truck carrying 5000 condoms, 800 HIV tests and a 7m inflatable prophylactic.

The co-ordinator of an HIV/Aids awareness tour, Polo Gomez, said on Wednesday that the "Condomovil" was parked in front of a friend's house in Mexico City when it disappeared on Sunday evening.

He believes the truck was stolen, but he doesn't know why. Police are still investigating.

The truck should be easy to spot. It features painted images of a peeled banana, the exposed part shaped like a condom, and a shirtless man saying: "I protect myself. Do you?"

[links]

The jokes write themselves. Maybe the truck was taken by their mates. It was your truck, but now it's durex truck. That was a terrible joke. They were both terrible jokes. At least I never did the one about the thief who came in the night...

If you eat too much cake, you get fat. If you want to avoid the consequences of eating too much cake, your doctor will recommend that you abstain from cake. At least a few days a month. If you tell your doctor that you can eat as much cake as you like worry free because you are always careful to throw up in a bag after every meal, your doctor will say that you have an eating disorder. A serious eating disorder which ruins lives.

Contraception is the same. You can either have a healthy sex life in which you may occasionally have to abstain from sex because you don't want to have a baby right now, or you can convince yourself (wrongly) that you can have oodles of consequence free sex so long as you have your little rubber bag. You can dislocate the connection between your sexual activities and the natural laws of cause and effect and enter in to a fantasy world where women can be used for pleasure and then discarded.

That ruins lives as well.

Not very funny is it.