The Consequences of Silence

Last updated on: August 22, 2014 at 3:53 pm by Rebecca Frech

The Consequences of Silence 2014-08-22T15:53:15-05:00 Rebecca Frech

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What do you say when the Deacon says you should be done? To whom do you turn when the man who teaches RCIA in your parish tells you that it’s time for you to “take a break” from having any more children? What does that mean anyway? I usually take a 2 year hiatus from baby to baby, but that’s God’s spacing not mine. When he says that we’re okay because we’ve “done our part”, to whom should we then hand the baton?

When the woman who teaches CCD (that’s Catholic Sunday School to all the non-Catholics), asks your friend “Don’t they have enough already? How can they possibly feed them all?”, how do you correct her?

I am perplexed by the negative comments in the one refuge from the outside world that I thought we had. If the Catholic clergy and CCD teachers think we’re a bit loony…are we? It is difficult enough to try and live a moral life in this society without those we trust digging out the ground underneath us.

When my sweet Computer Guy came into the Church two years ago, he had two problems with being Catholic: 1. Confession and 2. no contraception. He got over that Confession thing once he tried it. It still isn’t his favorite thing to do, it’s not really anyone’s favorite thing to do, but he gets the point of it now and goes fairly regularly. The contraception thing is hard for him. Still. Mainly, I think, because it is never discussed anywhere except with our crazy big-familied friends. During the RCIA process he told me that he had decided to let it go since I was making it out to be bigger than it was. The Church is merely making a suggestion about how to live, not proclaiming some sort of official teaching. I was floored. Of course it was official teaching that contraception is a sin, how could he think differently? Because, he reasoned, in 8 years of attending Mass faithfully he had never heard it mentioned, not even during the Respect for Life Sunday homilies when it would seem to be the order of the day.

If it is so important and such a widespread topic, then why is it never mentioned? Fear. The priests are afraid of offending people and losing Church membership. As a result, they are losing their moral authority.

If the person who is authorized to act in Persona Christi is too afraid of popular opinion to speak Truth to the people, then we are lost. We may have the Biblical, historical and moral high-ground on the issue, but we have surrendered it by simply walking away in silence.

There have always been difficult and uncomfortable topics for our priests to address, this is just the latest one in our 2000 year history. I would submit that the brave martyrs did not walk proudly into death so that the priests of today could hold their tongues and let their people walk happily into Hell. Speak out, please! The souls of your people are crying out for it.

“Who is he who cannot warn that no woman may take a potion so that she is unable to conceive or condemns in herself the nature which God willed to be fecund? As often as she could have conceived or given birth, of that many homicides she will be held guilty..” ~Caesarius of Arles

“Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit, where there are medicines of sterility [oral contraceptives], where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain only a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well. . . . Indeed, it is something worse than murder, and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you condemn the gift of God and fight with his [natural] laws? . . . Yet such turpitude . . . the matter still seems indifferent to many men—even to many men having wives. In this indifference of the married men there is greater evil filth; for then poisons are prepared, not against the womb of a prostitute, but against your injured wife. ” (Homilies on Romans 24 [A.D. 391]). ~John Chrysostom

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