August 3, 2008

World Youth Day: love and life united

Cardinal George's Schedule

  1. Aug. 3-9: Archdiocese of Chicago Jubilee Pilgrimage to Lourdes, France
  2. Aug. 11: 1:30 p.m., National Meeting of Hispanic Religious Sisters, Cabrini Retreat Center, Des Plaines 5:30 p.m., Big Shoulders Fund Annual Golf Classic, Olympia Fields Country Club
  3. Aug. 12: 10 a.m., Episcopal Council Meeting, St. Joseph College Seminary 4 p.m., Annual Curé d’Ars Awards, St. Joseph College Seminary
  4. Aug. 13: 7 p.m., Ul-Treya Prayer Gathering, St. Genevieve
  5. Aug. 14: 10:30 a.m., Catholic Church Extension Society Executive Committee Meeting 1 p.m., Administrative Council Meeting 6 p.m., Annual Rerum Novarum Dinner, St. Joseph College Seminary
  6. Aug. 15: Vacation
  7. Aug. 16: Vacation
Cardinal's Crest

Cardinal's Appointments

Vicariate IV has been re-divided into five Deaneries from three Deaneries. Two new Deaneries were created, and Cardinal George has appointed deans for their care.

Rev. Jeffrey Grob, pastor of St. Celestine Church, Elmwood Park, has been appointed Dean of Deanery IV-D in the northwest side of the Vicariate.

Rev. Robert Clark, Pastor of St. Cletus Church, La Grange, is the new dean of Deanery IV-E in the southwest side of Vicariate IV.

World Youth Day 2008 took place in Sydney, Australia, from July 15 to July 20. Almost three hundred young people from the Chicago area joined about 400,000 others from around the world for the final Mass on July 20 on a racetrack near Sydney.

World Youth Day is always a celebration when young people experience Catholic communion, the universal unity of the Church, gathered around the Holy Father and the bishops in union with him. The truth preached and experienced this World Youth Day was taken from Christ’s promise to the apostles just before he ascended to his Father: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses.” (Acts 1:8)

While the young Catholics taking part in World Youth Day leave encouraged, so do the bishops and the youth ministers and chaperones who come with them. The Pope himself spoke of encountering “the youthful face of the Church” in “the young pilgrims of the world.”

“These meetings,” the Holy Father said on his return to Rome, “represent stages of a great pilgrimage across the planet to show how faith in Christ makes us all children of the one Father Who is in heaven, and builders of a civilization of love.”

“Civilization of love”

“A civilization of love,” a phrase often used by Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, is a society where love and life are never separated. This principle of Catholic moral action guides not only the larger arena of political and economic realities but also the more personal theatre of sexual activity.

July 25 was the fortieth anniversary of an encyclical letter by Pope Paul VI on human life. In Humanae vitae, the Pope explained again why separating love and life through the use of artificial birth control betrays the life of a loving God within us and leads to personal and social tragedies.

Forty years ago, it was easy to see that physically blocking the completion of a sexual act by mechanical means destroyed the unity between love and life and was therefore morally wrong. What was new was the development of a chemical means to separate love and life, and this novelty meant the Church had to re-examine her teaching in the light of the wide spread dissemination of birth control pills. In Humanae vitae, Pope Paul VI didn’t just reassert the Church’s moral teaching; he developed it in the face of a new scientific discovery. He defined conjugal love as human love that is total, exclusive or faithful, and fruitful, a love that seeks “personification.” This “personification” is a child that resembles, even physically, his or her parents, with a father’s nose and a mother’s eyes, an uncle’s hands and a grandparent’s determination.

In marriage, there are many demonstrations of love that are so by intention only: personal gifts, small surprises, a word of praise and gratitude. But only the sexual conjugal joining of husband and wife is an act of love by its very nature, deepening the love between spouses in a unity open to new life. When this personal unity is deliberately separated from the possibility of procreation, the marital act loses its essential meaning.

Loss of love

When something is not what it should be, many things start to unravel and go wrong. Pope Paul VI wrote that the widespread acceptance and use of artificial contraception in sexual acts would cause a decrease in marital fidelity and a grave lowering of moral standards. The statistics on cohabitation, casual hookups, marital break ups and promiscuity even among youngsters are unfortunate witness to the truth of Paul VI’s words. Sexuality is trivialized and reduced to the experience of a moment; its relational purpose has almost disappeared from many persons’ lives. There is little love in such a civilization.

Society is founded on right relationships of justice and love. Families, the basic unit of society, have their origin in conjugal love, a love properly ordered, a love both unitive and procreative. Families and societies rise and fall together. Personal sexual morality has social consequences, as any social worker can attest. Recent public policy in our country, in completely separating the realm of “private” morality from that of social life, contracepts the creation of good families and of a good society.

Signs of hope

Fortunately, there is in many quarters a rethinking of the place of birth control in sexual activity. Natural family planning “fits” with a more developed ecological consciousness. Some Catholic women intellectuals are developing a more satisfactory and honest sense of feminism that finds an ally and not an adversary in Catholic moral teaching. Many young people are challenged to an idealism and even heroism that brings them beyond the easy hedonism often presented as the normal condition of adolescent life. We saw such young people again in Sydney, much to the chagrin of those who would pragmatically reduce human life and society to their basest terms.

Pope Benedict XVI, speaking of the invocation of the Spirit of love and life in Sydney, said that “this World Youth Day became a new Pentecost, from which the mission of young people started out afresh, called to be apostles of their peers, like so many saints and blesseds.” All young men and women, the Pope said, “are called to follow the saints’ example and share the personal experience of Jesus which changes the lives of his friends with the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God’s love.”

Love and life came together visibly in World Youth Day. In our families and our society, through the power of the Holy Spirit, that unity is possible here as well. God bless you.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Francis Cardinal George, OMI

Archbishop of Chicago