Bulletins
July 22, 2018
Download the Bulletin as a PDFDid you know that the World Health Organization in 2005 declared the combined hormonal contraceptive to be a group 1 carcinogen and “a known and probably cancercausing agent to humans”? But that is not why it is wrong but it should make you want to learn more.
This coming Wednesday is the fiftieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae, the encyclical letter published by Pope Paul VI. Please read the original document and, just as importantly, read those who can help you understand it.
Until my second year of the seminary when I heard the lecture “Contraception, Why Not?” by the professor Janet Smith, I acknowledged this teaching of the Church but did not understand its necessity. God bless the benefactor who sent an audio tape for each of the seminarians.
Professor Smith has updated her talk over the decades. A transcript of the original can be read online: (https://ntrda.me/2NViAaN) and the updated talk is being sold by Lighthouse Catholic Media (http://bit.ly/cracking-themyths). Would you like to help us buy a copy for each household in the parish?
Kimberly Hahn provides another powerful witness. Her father was a Protestant minister and her husband is Dr. Scott Hahn. Grappling with the Church's teachings on family life and artificial contraception eventually led her to conclude that the Roman Catholic Church is the Church founded by Christ. You can hear her online under the title “A Pastor’s Wife’s Journey Home” (https://goo.gl/WxujQQ).
Over the course of the next year we plan to have a monthly lecture series on Humanae Vitae that will bring to St. John some of the other great with powerful voices on this critical topic.
In the meantime I encourage you to look up Dads.org by Stephen Wood and subscribe to his newsletter. His piece for July is entitled “Five Reasons Why Contraception is an Awful Idea”. You can see it online even if you do not have a subscription: https://bit.ly/Dads-Newsletter-July-2018
