+ In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Let us talk on some more of the Teachings of the Church but to believe in them and to follow them; one must know Christ personally and we sometimes hear it in a homily at Mass, through the Scriptures; reading them in the Light of the Church, reading the books the saints wrote, trying to live the life a saint writes about that would work in a family setting or living it as a single person. Coming to be with Christ and adore Him in the Holy Eucharist, to receive Him in both species; body and blood or just body; depending what the priest gives out. Keeping our soul clean from sin; all sin by going to the Sacrament of Confession. By offering all you do and offering yourself as a spiritual Sacrifice to God; giving of your suffering to Jesus on the Cross. The best way to know Him; is by going to His mother Mary and ask her to tell you all about Jesus.
Be watchful my friends; because the devil is on the prowl for those people who are weak in faith and virtue. Our entire life on earth is a temptation as it: “Hence it is written in Job: “Man’s life on earth is a temptation.” These liberal women who want to make it pleasing to them about the word “Man” being used in everything; in Scripture when the word “Man” is used; the Scriptures are talking about Man and Woman. As I said above be watchful: “Every one, therefore, should be solicitous about his temptations, and watch in prayer, lest the devil find opportunity to catch him; who never sleepeth, but goeth about, seeking whom he may devour.”
There is no other way to go to Christ; except through His Church or have a relationship with His Church. No New Age Occult or other Occultisms will bring you to Christ; they will bring you to the ancient serpent who is called Devil or Satan who deceives people by becoming an Angel of Light to lead them astray. It is taught this in our Catholic Faith and we alone do not stand a chance against him and his demons; because they know Scripture better than anyone; except Jesus and it is with Jesus we can defeat them.
We must never forget that we are fighting a war against the powers and principalities of darkness; no human weapon will end it; but the Spiritual Weapons the Church gives to her children will; plus the help of her Immaculate Lamb the Bridegroom; Jesus Christ and the victory He won for us on the Cross.
Our intimacy must be with God alone; we must never enter into too much intimacy with a man or woman. “OPEN not thy heart to every man, but discuss thy business with one that is wise and feareth God. Be rarely with young people and strangers. Fawn not upon the rich, and be not fond of appearing in the presence of the great.
Keep company with the humble and the simple, with the devout and well-ordered, and converse of such things as are edifying. Be not an intimate of any woman; but in general commend all good women unto God.
Desire to be intimate only with God and His holy Angels; and shun the acquaintance of men. We should have charity towards all men; but intimacy is not expedient.” Thomas A Kempis on The Following of Christ.
Church Teaching:
Now, let us continue towards this other part of this writing and talking more on the Church’s Teaching; most likely you haven’t heard it or you have and forgot it.
Have you heard of In vitro fertilisation (IVF)? What is the Church’s ruling on this?
“Infertile couples sometimes resort to IVF in order to conceive a child. IVF is a laboratory technique by which human embryos are conceived in a petri dish which contains a culture medium. The woman is given hormones which stimulate her ovaries to produce up to 30 or more oocyte (ova). These are retrieved by inserting a needle into the ovaries via the vagina with ultrasound guidance. These oocyte are mixed with sperm. The sperm is obtained by masturbation and is usually donated by the husband. If the husband is infertile however, the sperm may be obtained from another man. If the women is infertile, likewise, the oocyte may be obtained from another woman, whose ovaries have been similarly stimulated. The embryos thus conceived are usually allowed to grow up to the four-to-eight-cell stage over three to four days, at which time some of the embryos are implanted in the woman’s uterus.
Embryos are sometimes implanted in the uterus other than that of the wife-a so-called “surrogate mother.” Some researchers obtain oocyte from women who donate them for financial compensation in order to conceive embryos purely for research purposes. These women are pre-selected because they are judged to have the genetic qualities most appropriate for the purpose of that specific research.
Because of the availability of new culture media, it has recently become possible to let the embryos grow for up to seven days, by which time, only the most vigorous survive. This reduces the number of embryos implanted and increases the number of successful implantations, while also reducing the number of multiple pregnancies. Note that most embryos (up to 19 out of 20), conceived in IVF clinics eventually die. If they are not implanted, they are either “donated” for research, in which case they are killed, or they are kept in cold storage in very low temperatures after which most are disposed of, or eventually die. Since frequently several embryos are implanted at one time, multiple pregnancies occur. Not infrequently, early in pregnancy, some of these embryos are killed by injection of potassium chloride into the embryo’s heart. This procedure is euphemistically called “fetal reduction.”
Catholic Church teaching
A human being comes into existence at the moment of fertilization of an oocyte (ovum) by a sperm. This fact has been recognized by the science of Human Embryology since 1883, and is still acknowledged today. The Church teaches that a human being must be respected-as a person-from the very first instant of his existence as a human being, and therefore, from that same moment, his rights as a person must be recognized among which in the first place, is the inviolable right of every innocent human being to life. The Church also teaches that from the moral point of view a truly responsible procreation vis-à-vis the unborn child, must be the fruit of marriage.
Pope Paul VI has taught that there is an “inseparable connection, willed by God, and unable to be broken by man on his own initiative, between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning.”
IVF violates the rights of the child: it deprives him of his filial relationship with his parental origins and can hinder the maturing of his personality. It objectively deprives conjugal fruitfulness of its unity and integrity, it brings about and manifests a rupture between genetic parenthood, gestational parenthood, and responsibility for upbringing. This threat to the unity and stability of the family is a source of dissension, disorder, and injustice in the whole of social life.
What about research on a human embryo?
The Church teaches that medical research must refrain from operations on live embryos, unless there is moral certainty of not causing harm to the life or integrity of the unborn child and mother, and on condition that the parents have given free and informed consent to the procedure. Since stem cell research on human embryos, in practice, invariably causes the death of those embryos, it too stands condemned.
In summary, the Catholic Church condemns as gravely evil acts, both IVF in and of itself, and stem cell research performed on IVF embryos.” By John B. Shea, MD FRCP
Issue: January/February 2003 http://catholicinsight.com/online/church/vatican/article_475.shtml
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19870222_respect-for-human-life_en.html The Respect of Human Life
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html Humanae Vitae
So, why did I share this with you? You might have a daughter and son-in-law who want to have a baby but nothing is happening. When they start talking on ways to have a baby and this topic comes up of doing what the Church forbids them to do; you can explain why this is the wrong choice to make. Plus, the one thing the Church agrees on this certain topic is Natural Family Planning. http://nfpandmore.org/
“What is natural family planning (NFP)?
NFP is a way of following God’s plan for achieving and/or avoiding pregnancy. It consists of ways to achieve or to avoid pregnancy using the physical means that God has built into human nature.
NFP consists of two distinct forms:
Ecological breastfeeding
. This is a form of child care that normally spaces babies about two years apart on the average.Systematic NFP
. This is a system that uses a woman’s signs of fertility to determine the fertile and infertile times of her cycle.Couples seeking to avoid pregnancy practice chaste abstinence during the fertile time of her cycle.”
This is the safe and secure way the Church wants the married couple to have a baby; if nothing is happening when they first tried to create one. This way you create the child naturally by the intercourse the man and wife have; the two become one flesh as it says in Scripture. We are to do all that is pleasing to God; we do not have the right do what we want to do but what we ought to do for God and what is pleasing to God.
I myself wonder what would be different if I found all these sites with Catholic Teaching back in my youth and find the sites to read books or sermons or letters by saints; but thanks be to God I found them after one year of college and now sharing them with you all.
I would like to share some pieces of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman and then I will close this writing.
This is from his Discourse on Faith and Judgment:
“WHEN we consider the beauty, the majesty, the completeness, the resources, the consolations, of the Catholic Religion, it may strike us with wonder, my brethren, that it does not convert the multitude of those who come in its way. Perhaps you have felt this surprise yourselves; especially those of you who have been recently converted, and can compare it, from experience, with those religions which the millions of this country choose instead of it. You know from experience how barren, unmeaning, and baseless those religions are; what poor attractions they have, and how little they have to say for themselves. Multitudes, indeed, are of no religion at all; and you may not be surprised that those who cannot even bear the thought of God, should not feel drawn to His Church; numbers, too, hear very little about Catholicism, or a great deal of abuse and calumny against it, and you may not be surprised that they do not all at once become Catholics; but what may fairly surprise those who enjoy the fulness of Catholic blessings is, that those who see the Church ever so distantly, who see even gleams or the faint lustre of her {193} majesty, nevertheless should not be so far attracted by what they see as to seek to see more,—should not at least put themselves in the way to be led on to the Truth, which of course is not ordinarily recognised in its Divine authority except by degrees.”
“Many explanations may be given of this difficulty; I will proceed to suggest to you one, which will sound like a truism, but yet has a meaning in it. Men do not become Catholics, because they have not faith. Now you may ask me, how this is saying more than that men do not believe the Catholic Church because they do not believe it; which is saying nothing at all. Our Lord, for instance, says, “He who cometh to Me shall not hunger, and he who believeth in Me shall never thirst”;—to believe then and to come are the same thing. If they had faith, of course they would join the Church, for the very meaning, the very exercise of faith, is joining the Church. But I mean something more than this: faith is a state of mind, it is a particular mode of thinking and acting, which is {194} exercised, always indeed towards God, but in very various ways. Now I mean to say, that the multitude of men in this country have not this habit or character of mind. We could conceive, for instance, their believing in their own religions, even if they did not believe in the Church; this would be faith, though a faith improperly directed; but they do not believe even their own religions; they do not believe in anything at all. It is a definite defect in their minds: as we might say that a person had not the virtue of meekness, or of liberality, or of prudence, quite independently of this or that exercise of the virtue, so there is such a religious virtue as faith, and there is such a defect as the absence of it. Now I mean to say that the great mass of men in this country have not this particular virtue called faith, have not this virtue at all. As a man might be without eyes or without hands, so they are without faith; it is a distinct want or fault in their soul; and what I say is, that since they have not this faculty of religious belief, no wonder they do not embrace that, which cannot really be embraced without it. They do not believe any teaching at all in any true sense; and therefore they do not believe the Church in particular.”
“Now, in the first place, what is faith? it is assenting to a doctrine as true, which we do not see, which we cannot prove, because God says it is true, who cannot lie. And further than this, since God says it is true, not with His own voice, but by the voice of His messengers, it is assenting to what man says, not simply viewed as a man, but to what he is commissioned to {195} declare, as a messenger, prophet, or ambassador from God. In the ordinary course of this world we account things true either because we see them, or because we can perceive that they follow and are deducible from what we do see; that is, we gain truth by sight or by reason, not by faith. You will say indeed, that we accept a number of things which we cannot prove or see, on the word of others; certainly, but then we accept what they say only as the word of man; and we have not commonly that absolute and unreserved confidence in them, which nothing can shake. We know that man is open to mistake, and we are always glad to find some confirmation of what he says, from other quarters, in any important matter; or we receive his information with negligence and unconcern, as something of little consequence, as a matter of opinion; or, if we act upon it, it is as a matter of prudence, thinking it best and safest to do so. We take his word for what it is worth, and we use it either according to our necessity, or its probability. We keep the decision in our own hands, and reserve to ourselves the right of reopening the question whenever we please. This is very different from Divine faith; he who believes that God is true, and that this is His word, which He has committed to man, has no doubt at all. He is as certain that the doctrine taught is true, as that God is true; and he is certain, because God is true, because God has spoken, not because he sees its truth or can prove its truth. That is, faith has two peculiarities;—it is most certain, decided, positive, immovable {196} in its assent, and it gives this assent not because it sees with eye, or sees with the reason, but because it receives the tidings from one who comes from God.”
“This is what faith was in the time of the Apostles, as no one can deny; and what it was then, it must be now, else it ceases to be the same thing. I say, it certainly was this in the Apostles’ time, for you know they preached to the world that Christ was the Son of God, that He was born of a Virgin, that He had ascended on high, that He would come again to judge all, the living and the dead. Could the world see all this? could it prove it? how then were men to receive it? why did so many embrace it? on the word of the Apostles, who were, as their powers showed, messengers from God. Men were told to submit their reason to a living authority. Moreover, whatever an Apostle said, his converts were bound to believe; when they entered the Church, they entered it in order to learn. The Church was their teacher; they did not come to argue, to examine, to pick and choose, but to accept whatever was put before them. No one doubts, no one can doubt this, of those primitive times. A Christian was bound to take without doubting all that the Apostles declared to be revealed; if the Apostles spoke, he had to yield an internal assent of his mind; it would not be enough to keep silence, it would not be enough not to oppose: it was not allowable to credit in a measure; it was not allowable to doubt. No; if a convert had his own private thoughts of what was {197} said, and only kept them to himself, if he made some secret opposition to the teaching, if he waited for further proof before he believed it, this would be a proof that he did not think the Apostles were sent from God to reveal His will; it would be a proof that he did not in any true sense believe at all. Immediate, implicit submission of the mind was, in the lifetime of the Apostles, the only, the necessary token of faith; then there was no room whatever for what is now called private judgment. No one could say: “I will choose my religion for myself, I will believe this, I will not believe that; I will pledge myself to nothing; I will believe just as long as I please, and no longer; what I believe today I will reject tomorrow, if I choose. I will believe what the Apostles have as yet said, but I will not believe what they shall say in time to come.” No; either the Apostles were from God, or they were not; if they were, everything that they preached was to be believed by their hearers; if they were not, there was nothing for their hearers to believe. To believe a little, to believe more or less, was impossible; it contradicted the very notion of believing: if one part was to be believed, every part was to be believed; it was an absurdity to believe one thing and not another; for the word of the Apostles, which made the one true, made the other true too; they were nothing in themselves, they were all things, they were an infallible authority, as coming from God. The world had either to become Christian, or to let it alone; there was no room for private tastes and fancies, no room for private judgment. {198}”
http://www.newmanreader.org/works/discourses/discourse10.html
Now my dear friends, this is what faith means and we must be watchful incase of the devil coming to devour us; we must be strong in faith and not be afraid to stand up and teach the faith. I hope the part on the Church’s teaching was good and hope you find the Papal Documents good as well.
God bless
Augustine 