It is sad to think that this warrants a post on the forum.
No, at the more orthodox parish I attend (that I now consider my home parish) the main priest does mention things like birth control and abortion, but at the parish we’ve gone to for years, never, ever do those topics arise. Well, to be fair, sometimes abortion gets mentioned around the anniv. of Roe v. Wade, but not even always then.
I suspect that might be a reason this isn’t brought up in homilies. I know when we have members of our RCIA who are under 16, the instructor covering the sacrament of marriage has to temper the discussion accordingly. (I still don’t understand why we sometimes have 10 year olds in RCIA but it’s happened several times!).
Me too.I opened this thread assuming it was something like a Priest told you birth control was ok while you were in confession.
This was a nice surprise
There are ways to talk about it without exposing children to topics that they shouldn’t hear.
Not something I would like to go through again.There is a sex shop within a short radius from where I live (gone are the days when sex shops could only be found in sleazy parts of the city), a restaurant that I ordered a take-out from about 2 months ago, shares the same small parking lot. My eight year old asks, “What is that (pointing the shop)?” After a small shock, I said with as much casuality as I could muster, “Oh, That’s a store, son”. Bried pause, then, “And what do they sell?”There are ways to talk about it without exposing children to topics that they shouldn’t hear.
Our previous priest wasn’t very good at it. There were many a time that I wanted to take my, then, young child out of Mass. And boy, the questions in the car after Mass? :eek: Not something I would like to go through again.
When he left and our new pastor came, the new pastor showed that you could talk about those topics without causing too many questions from the younger crowd.
I think it should be borne in mind that a homily should be aimed at a general audience and that if material not appropriate for kids is touched upon, it should be done in a subtle fashion as to fall under the little ones’ radar.I don’t think any of this needs to be worded so carefully. It is God’s commandment to us to go forth and multiply - it’s easy to celebrate the fact that Catholics are not supposed to interfere with God’s blessings of children! It’s not as if the priest is going to whip out a large photograph of an aborted child, after all. All he really has to say is something like, “And I remind you that faithful Catholics do not use birth control.”
I don’t know about EVERY Mass, but we should hear about it on a regular basis. I think that the Catholic trend of not discussing sex with our children until they are already in puberty is just wrong-headed. I’d rather have my children understand what is going on around them, and hear it from ME, rather than their peers or the predatory media.