I have been wondering for a while now why priests do not speak of contraception at all in their homilies…ever. I suppose this thread could be about many questions really. Should a priest speak of contraception to his flock? Why does he not? I read that somewhere that only between 8 and 17% of Sunday mass attending Catholics believe contraception to be morally wrong. Maybe this is part of the reason why Priests don’t speak up?? I think of asking my Priest questions on this topic but always hesitate. Do priests need to speak on contraception? (These figures might be incorrect. But the 9% quotation came from a Pew Research Polll. I will provide the link in a subsequent post if not in this OP. ) Should we encourage them to do so or not? Why do they hold back? Is it a pastoral concern that stops them?? (It goes without saying, but I will say it now anyways, that the Catholic Church does teach unequivocally that artificial contraception is a sin. As far as I know, artificial contraception would be considered grave matter.)
We lived in Indiana for two years, the priest there was amazing and the parish identified as a pro life pro family parish. He spoke often on marriage and contraception.
In roughly 20 years as a Catholic in the intermountain and northwest I’ve NEVER heard it at Mass and in more than one confession I was told to use ABC.
Here’s the thing, I wish they would speak on it more, however, there are several practical reasons they don’t.
1). There are kids at Mass. a ten minute homily on artificial birth control can make for some uncomfortable car rides home.
2. It must be dang hard, to call out your flock in something you know they are emotional about.
3. It’s money. I’ve spoken to several priests who have stated they won’t talk about it because the collection will suffer.
4. Also money, and a much more cynical reason… the more kids a parish has the lighter the collection tends to be. Families struggle, especially in our modern western culture. Expendable income is hard to come by and that affects the bottom line of everything, yes, even a parish. Plus more kids means more resources the parish will be providing.
Our parish in Indiana was vibrant, packed, reverent, orthodox, and growing. It was also the poorest parish we have ever seen. Struggling for basic things. No AC etc. but school was available to every child if they couldn’t afford it, they didn’t have to pay, the parish was amazing, but poor. And yes some of that (maybe most of that) had to do with the economics of that area of the country.
Our current parish floods money, but Mass is very very spacious.
As a youth minister we hit ABC hard with the teens. Knowing that this would probably be the only teaching they would ever hear about it. This lead to unhappy parents who felt judged because thier kids were being taught something thevparents were doing was wrong.
It was a nightmare.
I wish more priests around here would 1. Recognize ABC is wrong, and 2, preach about it to thier flock.
Fathers never want to have the etc talk with kids, but we do because we need to for thier lives and futures and souls. It should be no different for the “father” if our spiritual lives.
