ARTICLES
April 2001 ARTICLES
Contents © 2001
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
It's Like a Paralysis
Anti-Contraceptive Message Will Kill the Culture of Death
By Anne Knight
The St. Kilian Respect Life Committee is not the typical Catholic parish pro-life group. This organization, based in Mission Viejo, has become a nationwide outreach and is now reaching out to the world at large. Moreover, its apostolate raises an issue that even some Catholic pro-lifers are afraid to touch: contraception.
Two years ago, Brian Murphy, a St. Kilian's parishioner, was moved to start the parish's Respect Life Committee when Father Tom Cusack of Los Angeles, a Columban priest, gave a pro-life mission at the parish one Sunday. "At the end of it everybody dispersed; they had signed in on a list," Murphy explained. "As I began to walk out the door, Father called me back; he handed me the list and said, 'Brian, take care of this.'" At the time Murphy was already involved in several parish ministries, so he tried to curtail some of his other activities and delegate some of the pro-life tasks. "It just didn't work; it became clear that God wanted me to do it [the pro-life work]," he reflected.
Murphy serves as the chairman of the Respect Life Committee, which is comprised of ten active members. Initially the committee concentrated on supporting pro-life political candidates by distributing pro-life voter guides; "but then when we looked at the results, we saw that Catholics were not voting pro-life," Murphy lamented. "In California's 1998 gubernatorial race, 58 percent of Catholics who voted supported Gray Davis, the pro-abortion, Democratic candidate. According to exit polls, in the 2000 election, 50 percent of Catholic voters nationwide supported Al Gore, the pro-abortion, Democratic presidential candidate. In California, 56 percent of Catholic voters supported Gore. "We finally concluded that we had to face up to the fact that the contraceptive mentality had totally invaded the Church and had so choked the awe for children out of the life of the Church, that people just did not consider it to be an important issue," Murphy said. "We further concluded that the pulpit needed to be renewed and restored with the teachings of Humanæ Vitæ."
The committee then sought advice from Human Life International, which suggested presenting a Humanæ Vitæ conference for clergy and religious. Pope Paul VI issued the encyclical Humanæ Vitæ ("Of Human Life") in 1968 to reaffirm the Church's constant teaching that marriage must be open to new life and that artificial contraception is therefore gravely sinful.
The committee sent out 1,000 invitations to priests, deacons and men and women religious for its first conference, held in October 1999 at Prince of Peace Abbey in Oceanside. Ten priests from the Orange and San Diego dioceses attended. In response to 1,200 invitations, fifteen persons showed up at the second conference, held in May of last year. Twenty attended the third conference, in October, after 1,700 invitations were sent. The diocese of San Diego granted permission for all three conferences and endorsed the third.
The local conferences are being held at the abbey at six-month intervals. The conferences feature three presenters. The first, Father Matthew Habiger, chairman of the board for Human Life International, speaks on "The Role of Conscience." The second speaker, Father Daniel McCaffrey, a priest of the diocese of Oklahoma City who has established successful natural family planning programs and preached parish missions on Humanæ Vitæ nationwide, addresses. "Challenges at the Pulpit." Murphy, who holds a master's degree in experimental medicine and a doctorate in physiology, and works as a biomedical engineer, talks on "God's Plan for Life." At the end of the conferences, participants are invited to commit to giving at least four homilies per year on Humanæ Vitæ. At the last conference, all but one participant made the commitment.
Murphy believes the three speakers have a special charism to work together: "We know exactly the passion that the other one has," he said, "and we give the message in three completely different though complementary ways. The speaker ratings that we've all gotten are all excellent."
Murphy starts his talks with a discussion of Genesis, emphasizing God's commands to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it as necessary for human prosperity, and highlighting the Onan account's condemnation of contraception. This requires a rebuttal of pervasive overpopulation myth, so he points out that the United States, the world's third most populous nation, is also, materially, the world's most prosperous nation. "Population doesn't cause poverty; it causes prosperity," he says. "The first thing you need, to have prosperity, is population; the second thing you need is free markets; the third thing you need is clear conscience." In India and China, the world's two most populous nations, prosperity is stifled by heavy-handed government interference in the marketplace," says Murphy. Hinduism's rigid caste system and other quirks further dampen economic activity in India, he says. "In the United States, which was set free by Christianity, people were liberated to develop free markets and a free economy, so that has produced prosperity." He contrasts the United States with Canada, which has a small population: "Canada can't even afford to have its own automobile market," he declares. "In fact, it can't even afford to have its own refrigerator market, because there's not enough people."
In his talks Murphy makes a prophecy which he submits to the listener's discernment and that of the Church: "the culture of death," he says, "will not be defeated until there's repentance from contraception." Dissenters from Humanæ Vitæ have given up on chastity, he asserts. "God's plan for life essentially comes down to chastity for everybody," Murphy says, explaining that chastity is possible with the aid of the Holy Spirit. Just as it took over 150 years to finally stamp out the Arian heresy within the Church, he believes it will take that long to stamp out the contraceptive heresy. "It will eventually be stamped out when people keep realizing that it's so important," says Murphy. "Rome is making sure that all of their appointments for bishop are people who approve of Humanæ Vitæ. So, slowly over time, some of these old diehards are just going to die off. For example, you've got almost a virtual schismatic situation there in Canada, but the schismatic bishops are going to die off. Humanæ Vitæ is alive and well while the dissenters are dying.
"Our goal," says Murphy, "is to make Humanæ Vitæ a household word in the Church -- and it will eventually become a household word in the Church. It is one of the most fantastic, most prophetic encyclicals of the twentieth century."
Currently the committee has a Humanæ Vitæ conference scheduled in Chicago for March and has conferences pending in Rome; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Belleville, Illinois; Atlanta, Georgia; and El Paso, Texas. The next local Humanæ Vitæ conference for the dioceses of Orange, San Bernardino and San Diego will be held on May 15-16, 2001 at Prince of Peace Abbey in Oceanside. In Rome, two conferences, both for seminarians, are tentatively planned for March: one in English and one in Spanish, with Father Ignacio Barreiro, of Human Life International's Rome office, and Murphy as speakers, since both men are bilingual.
Murphy explained the importance of holding Humanæ Vitæ conferences in Rome: "Seminarians who go to Rome tend to be the brighter, more promising young men for the priesthood," he said. "They also tend to be the ones who eventually become bishops. This is where it's taking on a worldwide context; Rome is really the center of the Church. So, putting on a conference in Rome for the seminarians is getting right down to the root, starting with a fresh, clean piece of paper."
Older priests, "55 or 60 years of age," said Murphy, "have had 30 years of propaganda; we just can't seem to overcome the propaganda. They say they agree with us, then they don't do anything. Even the most orthodox ones that we can find who are in the most violent agreement with us have yet to tell us that they've really been able to give this message from the pulpit. It's like a paralysis; it's just unbelievable. So, our approach is just to keep hammering the message, just keep raising the level of the water in the lake behind the dam until eventually the water level gets high enough that it flows over the dam and people start talking."
A major obstacle in persuading clergy and religious to preach about Humanæ Vitæ, said Murphy, is a reaction many have to any mention of natural family planning. "They immediately put it aside," said Murphy, "and say, 'Okay, that's for the diocesan program; that's for the couple who are teachers; that's not for me; I don't talk about natural family planning.' But what we want to do is say, 'Humanæ Vitæ is what you've got to talk about; you've got to talk about God's plan for life, about the generosity that we're called to in accepting God's plan for life, about the evils of contraception.' You've got to clearly divide it into two separate issues.
"When we put on these conference we have to make it clear that 'you are not being invited to an NFP conference; neither is this a conference to tell you to hire someone in the parish to teach NFP; that's not what this conference is about. This conference is not about NFP; this conference is about erasing the evil contraceptive mentality that's ingrained in the consciences of the people that are sitting in your pews, that are coming to communion and committing a sacrilege. This is about your flock and about teaching them that, by accepting the love of God and accepting His plan for life and accepting the principles of chastity, they will maintain their marriage; whereas contraception is an offense to chastity and destroys the marriage.'"
St. Kilian's Respect Life committee launched a web site (http://www.godsplanforlife.org) early in 2000. The Committee refers inquirers to the web site as a means of explaining its ministry and thereby reducing the amount of printed information it would otherwise have to mail. The site presents Church teaching on the sanctity of life, chastity, marriage, sodomy, contraception and the blessing of having children. It also provides information on its Humanæ Vitæ conferences; and includes an extensive listing of pro-life links, several articles on Church teachings, a pro-life voting pledge, key papal encyclicals on life issues, and two articles on declining worldwide fertility rates.
"The very interesting thing about our committee is that the people are all very prayerful," said Murphy. "They do as much work with their prayers as they do with their hands and feet." There are five regular participating committee members and five others who either contribute occasionally to the committee's work or contribute significantly to its outreach by work they perform at home. There are ten active members. Murphy noted that all the permanent committee members were all people "who live the values of Humanæ Vitæ: they have a generous attitude toward children; they have four or five children and they never practiced artificial contraception. Those are the ones that, coincidentally -- under God's coincidence -- ended up becoming the permanent members of the committee."
St. Kilian's pastor, Father James Dunning, has approved all the committee's activities and has agreed to sign the invitation letters to the Humanæ Vitæ conferences.
For more information, contact St. Kilian Respect Life Committee, 25262 Chrisanta, Mission Viejo, California 92691; (949) 586-4440; webmaster@godsplanforlife.org