I’ve decided to add a new dimension to my to my 500 reasons and counting tag with a few short posts about areas where the rich, integrated life of the True Faith hits me hardest, personally. These are not exhaustive or comprehensive, just a few short reflections of a few of the things that make me most grateful to be Catholic. Here’s the first:
I’m Catholic Because: The Church Protects the Family
The Catholic Church is the last bastion of true defense of the family. She has never wavered in teaching that divorce, contraception, abortion, and pornography are grave evils contrary to the moral law, the dignity of human beings, the sacredness of the sacrament of marriage, and a healthy society. Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae has proven to be prophetic in its anticipation of the evils of our times which flow from the unrestricted acceptance and proliferation of contraception. The Church has continually stood up for the dignity of the family, the rights of children, the rights of parents, and educated parents about the grave obligations and responsibilities they have towards their children. Nowhere but in the teachings of the Catholic Church is the dignity of the human person as imago Dei, the true sanctity and ends of marriage, and the welfare of children, fully understood and defended against all that would deform and destroy the most intimate and sacred bonds of human life.
Humanae Vitae - Pope Paul VI: “Men rightly observe that a conjugal act imposed on one's partner without regard to his or her condition or personal and reasonable wishes in the matter, is no true act of love, and therefore offends the moral order in its particular application to the intimate relationship of husband and wife. If they further reflect, they must also recognize that an act of mutual love which impairs the capacity to transmit life which God the Creator, through specific laws, has built into it, frustrates His design which constitutes the norm of marriage, and contradicts the will of the Author of life. Hence to use this divine gift while depriving it, even if only partially, of its meaning and purpose, is equally repugnant to the nature of man and of woman, and is consequently in opposition to the plan of God and His holy will. [...] “Human life is sacred—all men must recognize that fact," Our predecessor Pope John XXIII recalled. "From its very inception it reveals the creating hand of God.””
Familiaris Consortio - Pope St. John Paul II: “The family in the modern world, as much as and perhaps more than any other institution, has been beset by the many profound and rapid changes that have affected society and culture. Many families are living this situation in fidelity to those values that constitute the [...] Knowing that marriage and the family constitute one of the most precious of human values, the Church wishes to speak and offer her help to those who are already aware of the value of marriage and the family and seek to live it faithfully, to those who are uncertain and anxious and searching for the truth, and to those who are unjustly impeded from living freely their family lives.”
Arcanum - Pope Leo XIII: “God thus, in His most far-reaching foresight, decreed that this husband and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race, from whom it might be propagated and preserved by an unfailing fruitfulness throughout all futurity of time. And this union of man and woman, that it might answer more fittingly to the infinite wise counsels of God, even from the beginning manifested chiefly two most excellent properties - deeply sealed, as it were, and signed upon it - namely, unity and perpetuity. From the Gospel we see clearly that this doctrine was declared and openly confirmed by the divine authority of Jesus Christ."
Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The fruitfulness of conjugal love extends to the fruits of the moral, spiritual, and supernatural life that parents hand on to their children by education. Parents are the principal and first educators of their children. In this sense the fundamental task of marriage and family is to be at the service of life” (no. 1653). “The state may not legitimately usurp the initiative of spouses, who have the primary responsibility for the procreation and education of their children” (no. 2372).
