The Catholic Bishops of England and Wales have released a statement surrounding the recent events. It is available on their website, www.catholic-ew.org.uk. It is being made available to all parishioners in all the parishes of our countries either last weekend or this weekend.

In response to our Bishops’ request we will have an additional Holy Hour in St Joseph’s every Friday in May after the 10am, until 11.30am.

The Narthex is also open at other times for private prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in the Tabernacle.

5th Sunday of the Year

We are all equal in the sight of God. Although he may have given us different vocations to fulfill in the world, at a deeper level we are simply his children, sinful, but loved by him and forgiven through the death of his Son. This fact is what gives us all our fundamental dignity – as St Paul says: ʻIf anyone wants to boast, let him boast in the Lordʼ.

Despite our equal dignity, it does not follow that all human opinions are equally valid. A child who says that 2 + 2 = 5 needs to be corrected: so do adults who adhere to White Supremacy or the doctrines of the Taliban. In such cases, correcting error is not an affront to dignity of those people, but actually enhances it: by offering them the truth we put them in touch with reality and give them the chance to live their lives in a better and fuller way – as Jesus says in the Gospel, it is the truth which sets us free.

Some truths about the human condition are so basic that they have come to be known as the ʻNatural Lawʼ. Many facts about sexuality, parenthood and the family come into this category. To take a topical example, most people instinctively believe that the married love of a husband and wife provides the best possible context in which to raise a child – this is the way God intended things to be and it is the best way. Believing this is not based on prejudice or bigotry, nor does it mean we hate single parents, orphans, homosexuals or other people whose lives follow a different pattern. But we do believe there are certain facts which cannot be denied, and we claim the right to speak about these facts and teach them to our children.

The Governmentʼs ʻEquality Billʼ currently being debated in Parliament seeks to prevent us speaking about or teaching the Natural Law in its fullness – hence Pope Benedictʼs comments during the week, that such legislation ʻimposes unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefsʼ. Fashionable or unfashionable, we have a duty to pass on that which God has shown us to be true. For, as Pope Benedict remarked to the English Bishops:

ʻFidelity to the Gospel in no way restricts the freedom of others – on the contrary it serves their freedom by offering them the truthʼ.

In today’s First Reading (Genesis 2: 18 – 24) we learn of the divine intention for marriage and why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, and they become one body – just as Jesus says of both the Eucharist and of the Church – This is My Body!

Today’s Gospel (Mark 10: 2 – 16) contrastingly shows the legalistic mindset of those who fail to recognise the goodness of God and see things negatively. They view marriage as a legal contract, rather than as a God-given Covenant, i.e. a two-way relationship of sacrifice and service.

The Church teaches that:

the marital union of man and woman … is, by its very nature, ordered to the communion and good of the couple, and to the generation and education of children. According to the original divine plan this conjugal union is indissoluble, as Jesus Christ affirmed: “What God has joined together, let no one put asunder.” (Mark 10: 9)

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The Sacrament of Marriage is a three-way relationship between husband, wife and Almighty God, in which God is always the most loving, the most faithful, the most forgiving, the most strong. It is His grace and strength which enables the couple to live their life of covenant love. This Sacrament gives husbands and wives the capacity to love one another as Christ loves His Bride, the Church (Ephesians 5: 25).

The Catholic Church supports and enhances marriage and family life in every aspect, and against increasing opposition. In this parish we do so particularly through Marriage Preparations, Teams of Our Lady, Faith in the Family, LIFE, our Schools, safeguarding children, Korean Catholic Family group, and many other initiatives.

In this Sunday’s Goepsl we find Jesus and his disciples journeying towards Jerusalem where He will suffer and die out of love for us. The disciples are so insensitive to the sufferings of Jesus because they are arguing amongst themselves as to which of them was the greatest.

Our divided heart is similarly the cause of our disharmony and insensitivity to the things of God and the sufferings of others. Being caught up in our own selfish concerns blinds us to the needs of others.

St James, in today’s second reading, also speaks of disharmony within ourselves:

Where do these wars and battles between yourselves first start? … in the desires fighting inside your own selves.

These battles needs quelling, and the disharmony needs healing and harmonising – not only within ourselves but, more importantly, between ourselves and God. The Sacrament of Penance brings about this healing and harmony by God’s love and mercy.

Jesus Christ gave his power to forgive sins to his apostles and, through them, to their successors, the bishops and priests of the Catholic Church. While the form of the sacrament has varied over the centuries, the requirement for priestly absolution and (except when the penitent is incapable) verbal confession has remained constant.

Regular Confession stops us from letting our sins fester and deepen their hold on us; it helps to develop a mature conscience; gives us grace to resist temptation, and bestows healing and release from the burden of sin.

Confessions are heard in every Catholic Church, and in St Joseph’s on Saturdays from 10.30 – 11.30am, and 5.15 – 5.45pm.

Following on from last week…

Pope Benedict’s defence of the Catholic belief that condoms are an inadequate response to the AIDS epidemic has found support in some unexpected quarters. Edward C Green, Director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Centre of Population and Development Studies (a prestigious secular institution) told reporters:

the best evidence we have supports the Pope’s comments

adding

there is a consistent association shown by our best studies … between greater availability and use of condoms and higher (not lower) HIV – infection rates.

Green’s comments were made in an interview with the (secular) American journal National Review Online.

The National Catholic Bioethics Center of Philadelphia, USA, also carries the following story on its website:

An exhaustive review of the impact of condom promotion on actual HIV transmission in the developing world concluded that condoms have not been responsible for turning around any of the severe African epidemics. This rigorous study was originally commissioned by UNAIDS [the joint United Nations programme on HIV/AIDS], and concluded by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco. Instead of welcoming the findings, and adapting HIV prevention strategies accordingly, UNAIDS first tried to alter the findings, and ultimately refused to publish them. The findings were so threatening to UNAIDS that the researchers were finally forced to publish them on their own in another, peer-reviewed journal.

Read more at www.ncbcenter.org.

Beginning a tour of Africa, Pope Benedict XVI restated the Catholic belief that distributing condoms will not solve the scourge of HIV/AIDS. For this he was predictably vilified in the western media. The Pope’s comments were “close to premeditated murder“, according to one German MP, Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Hysterical reactions such as these should encourage us to look at the issue more rationally.

No-one pretends that the problem of HIV/AIDS in Africa is anything other than a tragedy – least of all the Catholic Church. Worldwide, 1 in 4 AIDS patients is treated in a Catholic clinic: 27% of the centres that treat HIV/AIDS sufferers are Catholic based.

So why does the Church argue for a solution beyond a deluge of condoms? Firstly, because no country in the world has solved its HIV/AIDS problems that way. A famous example is Thailand. In 1987 there were 112 cases of HIV/AIDS in that country. The Thai Health Ministry responded with a ’100% condom use’ policy. By 2003 there were 899,000 cases of HIV/AIDS, which had resulted in 125,000 deaths. The policy had failed. By contrast, Uganda – with a large Catholic population – implemented an AIDS prevention policy focusing primarily on faithfulness in marriage. Whereas 30% of its population were infected in the 1990s, this figure is down to around 8% today.

Encouraging marital fidelity (as opposed to condom use) is important for other reasons. HIV/AIDS spreads principally through the exploitation of the vulnerable (usually women) and this situation must be challenged, not tolerated. As the Pope said this week, HIV/AIDS will ultimately by overcome by ‘the humanisation of sexuality … a spiritual and human renewal bringing about a new way of behaving towards one another’. This means encouraging fidelity and chastity – God’s law. But western liberals see their own values challenged by this approach and prefer to pour scorn upon a Pope who has made the journey to Africa – at the age of 83 – because he cares for the people of that continent and wants to help them. Catholics should be proud to support him.