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| How
to Preserve the Catholic Family Our subject on "How to Preserve the Catholic Family" deserves more than a single conference. It deserves not only an hour's reflection but a lifetime of prayerful meditation. Nothing less than the survival of the Catholic Church in one county after another is at stake. |
| The
Role of Catholic Women Today - Hope of the Family for the Third Millennium Our title for this conference is unusual. We are not speaking of the family in the third millennium. That would be prophetic because only God knows the future. We are speaking of the family for the third millennium. What do we mean? We mean that family life in the closing decade of the second millennium must be stronger, more solid, more secure than ever before since the dawn of Christianity. Why? Because family life in the Western world is faced with challenges which threaten its very survival. |
| The
Family for the Third Millennium Our plan here is to prayerfully reflect on three areas of a subject that is as broad and deep as the ocean. We shall ask ourselves: What are the challenges facing the family in our day? Why does the Catholic Church offer the only solution to these challenges? How are we to respond to these challenges? |
| The
Eucharist: Foundation of the Christian Family Without the Eucharist, there would not be a livable sacrament of matrimony or a stable Christian family….The Holy Eucharist is indispensable for living out the supernatural, and therefore humanly impossible, demands that Christ places on those who enter marriage in His name. |
| Humanae
Vitae - Charter of the Family and the Catholic Faith No single papal document in modern times has received more publicity than Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae. Months before it was published on the feast of St. James the Apostle, July 25, 1968, the secular press of the world predicted a change in the Catholic Church's position on contraception. When the document was issued, its uncompromising stand on artificial birth control became an acid test of Catholic orthodoxy. For the first time in centuries, the term "dissenters" came into popular use. Those who disagreed with Humanae Vitae came to be identified as dissenters from the Church's ordinary, but infallible, teaching authority. |
| Prodigal Sons and Daughters First, by way of long introduction. I don’t believe anyone has any question about the need for retrieving, recalling, reconverting millions of lapsed Catholics throughout the world and at least hundreds of thousands, I would submit, even millions, in our own country. In one large diocese after another, parishes are closing. Catholics schools are down to a fraction of what they had been even twenty years ago. The millions of young people, once-believing Catholics, who no longer either attend Mass or receive the sacraments. |
| Either Stop Contraception or Destroy the Family God in His mercy allows evil that greater good may come as a result of the evil. He has allowed contraception to plague the modern world so that we may repent and return to our Father's house. I have deliberately stated the title of this conference in uncompromising language: "Either we stop contraception or we destroy the family." This is a warning to all of us, married and single, the laity and the clergy, bishops, priests, deacons, and religious, parents and children. |
| How to Keep Your Children Catholic I don't think anyone here has any doubt about why we should speak about keeping our children Catholic. The widespread loss of young Catholics to the true faith is unparalleled in Christian history. Millions of teenagers and those in their early twenties are leaving the Catholic Church in one so-called developed country after another. I will never forget the dinner I had with a Catholic father and mother who sadly told me that their seventh child had just left the Church. All seven had been given a nominally Catholic education, at great sacrifice to their parents. |
| The Blessed Virgin and the Sanctification of the Family What is the role of the Blessed Virgin in the sanctification of the family? In other words: How important is Our Lady in making holy, or sanctifying the Catholic family? |
| The Holy Family: Model for the Modern World If there is one phenomenon that characterizes the modern world, especially the modern western world, it is the breakdown of family life. The most rampant divorce rate of human history, which in some cities in the United States has reached a rate approaching a 100%. One large city, unnamed, recently had a divorce rate of 500%, five divorces for one marriage that year. The national American rate is well over 50% and climbing constantly. European social scientists, who see what’s happening, say America on these conditions cannot survive. |
| The Survival of the Catholic Family The Catholic family in super-developed countries like the United States is on trial for its existence. This is not my personal opinion but the measured judgment of the Vicars of Christ. One modern pope after another keeps warning the faithful about the deadly struggle going on in the world today, between Christ, the Light of the world, and Satan, the prince of darkness, and the main focus of this struggle is the FAMILY. |
| The Christian Family: Parents For Eternal Life This then brings us face to face with the gravest duty of believing Catholic parents. They must be convinced that their primary responsibility as parents is to prepare the children that God gave them—for eternal life…Parents, in God’s plan, are to conceive and give birth to, and nourish and educate their children for life after bodily death. After all, the only purpose that God has in having parents here on earth is that they might raise families for everlasting life in heaven…Parents must always keep this vision clearly in their minds. We are fathers and mothers of children for heaven. |
| Home Education and Survival of the Catholic Family There are some topics that are meant to startle the audience to attention. Like clever ads in the newspapers or magazines you say something bizarre to catch the readers' notice; but the title of the ad does not really mean what the words are saying. This is not the case here. The full title of my talk to you would read, "Home Education is Necessary for the Survival of the Catholic Family." |
| The Catholic Family and Vocations Where are vocations to the priesthood and the religious life mainly fostered? In strong Catholic families. When do these vocations flourish? When Catholic families flourish. When do vocations wane? When Catholic family life is weak. |
| Charter of the Family and the Catholic Faith No single papal document in modern times has received more publicity than Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae. Months before it was published on the feast of St. James the Apostle, July 25, 1968, the secular press of the world predicted a change in the Catholic Church’s position on contraception. When the document was issued, its uncompromising stand on artificial birth control became an acid test of Catholic orthodoxy. For the first time in centuries, the term "dissenters" came into popular use. Those who disagreed with Humanae Vitae came to be identified as dissenters from the Church’s ordinary, but infallible, teaching authority. |
| Catholic Families: Heroic? It is common knowledge that something drastic has happened to the family in the modern world. Countries like the United States reveal such a breakdown of marriage as Western civilization has not known in 2000 years…. There are many reasons for this rebellion against the family and revolution against marital stability. |
| The Catholic Family in the Modern World In one simple statement, we may say that marriage and the family needed redemption because they were both deeply steeped in sin. When we speak of the fall of man, we must remember this means not only the fall of man as an individual, but the fall of man as a social being. Or again, the fall of man means not only the fall of single human beings, but the fall of human society. Everything that we associate with original sin for the individual person should be applied also to what we may call the original sin of human society, and for our purpose, of the human family which is the basic unit of society. |
| The Christian Family The family as a group of persons of common ancestry began with the human race. But if we are to understand the meaning of the Christian family, we should know something of the family in pre-Christian times. The reason is that Christ elevated the family to a dignity and stability that simply did not exist before He came into the world. |
| How the Catholic Family Will Survive for the Third Millennium The Catholic family in super-developed countries like the United States is on trial for its existence. This is not my personal opinion but the measured judgment of the Vicars of Christ. One modern pope after another keeps warning the faithful about the deadly struggle going on in the world today, between Christ, the Light of the world, and Satan, the prince of darkness, and the main focus of this struggle is the FAMILY. |
| The Holy Eucharist: Foundation for Fostering the Christian Family and Rebuilding Christian Civilization Our present meditation is on the Holy Eucharist as the bedrock foundation for the Christian family and for rebuilding Christian civilization throughout the world. What I wish to stress is two words in the title of this conference: "Foundation" and "Rebuilding." Our focus, therefore, will be to explain how and why devotion to the Holy Eucharist is necessary as the divinely ordained foundation for Christian families; and how Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament is our only hope for rebuilding a civilization based on the values of authentic Christianity. |
| The Christian Family as God's Gift to the World Our subject is "The Christian Family As God’s Gift to the World." The word "Christian" is essential. Certainly the family is a gift of God. But the family, as we Catholics understand the term, came into existence only with the coming of Christ. |
| Family The family as a group of persons of common ancestry began with the human race. But if we are to understand the meaning of the Christian family, we should know something of the family in pre-Christian times. The reason is that Christ elevated the family to a dignity and stability that simply did not exist before He came into the world. |
| The Family Stated in one sentence, parents have the right to give their offspring a share in their own life of the spirit, corresponding to the share they have given the children in their life of the body. Or, in more concrete terms, parents have the right to communicate their own religious beliefs and practices to the sons and daughters to have whom they have already communicated their physical existence as human beings. |
| Eucharist and the Alliance of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary With this as a short introduction we are ready to reword our title to read, "The wellbeing, even the survival, of the human family depend on the faith of married people in the Holy Eucharist in imitating the mutual love of Jesus and Mary." |
| The Holy Family Since the coming of Christ the Catholic family is not just a poetic or rhetorical model but the pattern of what all family life in the world must be. Family life came into existence with the coming of Christ in a way that no one anywhere in recorded history had lived "family life" before the time of Christ. |
| The Holy Eucharist: Christ's True Presence for Mobilizing the Catholic Family in Today's Cultural War We do not normally associate the Holy Eucharist with marriage and the family. But we should. Without the Eucharist, there would not be a livable sacrament of matrimony or a stable Christian family. What are we saying? We are saying that Christ intended these two sacraments to be related as condition and consequence. The Eucharist is the condition, and matrimony as the core of the family is the supernatural consequence. |
| Practical Ways to Save the Family For the Third Millennium I am saying that the most fundamental way the parents train their sons and daughters in the ways of God is by themselves living the ways of God. |
| Parents as Primary Educators—Parents For Eternal Life In a word, children are to be taught that their short stay here in time is only a preparation for the world that will never end. They are to be trained for heaven. That is why the subtitle of my article to you is: "Parents for Eternal Life". |
| The Responsibility of Catholic Parents Parents have the grave primary duty to educated and train their children in the Catholic faith, in Catholic worship and in morality. Why? In order to prepare them for eternal life in heaven. In one declarative sentence—the purpose or goal of Catholic education is heaven. And the only reason under God that parents even should bring children into the world is to prepare them for heaven. It would be shear madness to bring children into the world for "just" this world. Lord, spare us! |
| Women and Christianity It was Christianity that gave women, for the first time in human history, an equality with men which they had never enjoyed before. Where Christianity was established, women were not only respected but honored and held in high respect. Among believing Christians, the Blessed Virgin Mary is the greatest woman who ever lived. Except for her, God not only would not have, but could not have, become man. The Incarnation began in the womb of His mother. And the world has been drastically changed ever since. |
| The Book: The Catholic Family in the Modern World The breakdown of the family in once-flourishing Christian countries is the consequence of a de-Christianized society. What, then, is the solution? It’s obvious. Restore authentic Christianity and you will restore family life. |
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