St. Joseph of the Lakes

The readings this weekend focus on Jesus’ teaching on marriage and welcoming children. Over the past 70 years our society has gradually shifted from associating sexual relations with marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting, to an emphasis on the experience of the people having the sex. It’s like a great amnesia in which we have forgotten that sex is critical to ensuring the future of the human race. “Be fruitful and multiply” Genesis 1:28.

Demographers caution that a crisis of depopulation is now in its early stages and will gather steam globally over the next 50 years. Virtually all economically advanced countries, including the United States, now have birthrates less than replacement levels, and the rest of the world is not far behind. The reasons behind this are being debated and discussed by many, but whatever the reasons, the fact is that around the world people are simply having fewer and fewer children and the consequences of this will be profound over time.

We can barely begin to imagine the social and economic changes that will happen as each generation is smaller than the previous generation for the first time in human history. China is on this cusp of this new reality as it decreases by 10,000 people each day and is trying to figure out how to reverse its fortunes. At its most basic level, more children will need to be born and lovingly raised. That will require selflessness and heroic generosity from parents as most of us have known from our own past.

Jesus welcomes the children and proclaims that sexuality is a gift from God, and that marriage is a calling from God in which a man and woman give their themselves to each other in a life-long union that is open to new life. The Catholic Church’s teachings on Human Sexuality, Marriage, Contraception, and Abortion are often misunderstood and maligned, and unappreciated. Yet there are real consequences for humanity when we stray from God’s intentions for life and our common good. Decreasing population may cause a renewed appreciation for the teachings of the Church and perhaps our amnesia about the procreative importance of sex may begin to lift as we rediscover the joys God longs for us.

With Joy in Christ,

Fr. Deziel