The Pope is headed for Australia, where he spend ten days and will attend World Youth Day.
The usual collection of amoral freaks will greet him. In some respects, you can judge a man by the quality of his opponents.
"The coalition is not anti-religious. We have Christians in our midst," she noted. "We want to support the Catholics For Condoms, which is a group in the U.S. We want to support the Rainbow Sash, which is the group of homosexuals within the Catholic Church. We're not anti-Catholic youth. We want to talk to them about these issues so that they can go home and talk to the people in their areas, in their churches about these issues and what Australian young people are saying to them."
Groups that promote things contrary to Catholic teaching are not good Catholics, nor are they good Christians. How could they be? If you are a Catholic, you believe that the fullness of truth resides within the Church in the person of Christ, present in the Eucharist. If you start pressuring the church to change to the whims of the times, you are missing the point of Christianity. One has to conform oneself to it to be saved by it; one must strive to uphold and obey the teaching always. When you start working against the teaching, you are working against the Church, and against the person of Christ. It is really that simple.
Consider the Church's position on abortion and contraception, articulated in the Didache, in the first century.
The second commandment of the Teaching: "Do not murder; do not commit adultery"; do not corrupt boys; do not fornicate; "do not steal"; do not practice magic; do not go in for sorcery; do not murder a child by abortion or kill a newborn infant. "Do not covet your neighbor's property; do not commit perjury; do not bear false witness"; do not slander; do not bear grudges. Do not be double-minded or double-tongued, for a double tongue is "a deadly snare." Your words shall not be dishonest or hollow, but substantiated by action. Do not be greedy or extortionate or hypocritical or malicious or arrogant. Do not plot against your neighbor. Do not hate anybody; but reprove some, pray for others, and still others love more than your own life.
Catholic teaching on abortion has been consistent for twenty centuries. Abortion was not unknown in the ancient world; what is new is the monumental scale of our barbarity in promoting it and proclaiming it good.
Consider contraception, also not unknown in the ancient world:
History further illuminates the Church's position on this subject. Anthropological studies show that means of contraception existed in antiquity. Medical papyri described various contraceptive methods used in China in the year 2700 BC and in Egypt in the year 1850 BC. Soranos (AD 98-139), a Greek physician from Ephesus, described seventeen medically approved methods of contraception. Also at this time, abortion and infanticide were not uncommon practices in the Roman Empire.The early Christian community upheld the sanctity of marriage, marital love, and human life. In the New Testament, the word pharmakeia appears, which some scholars link to the birth control issue. Pharmakeia denotes the mixing of potions for secretive purposes, and from Soranos and others, evidence exists of artificial birth control potions. Interestingly, pharmakeia is oftentimes translated as "sorcery" in English. In the three passages in which pharmakeia appears, other sexual sins are also condemned: lewd conduct, impurity, licentiousness, orgies, "and the like." (Confer Galatians 5:19-21.) This evidence highlights that the early Church condemned anything which violated the integrity of marital love.
The key to Catholic sexual ethics is the recognition of what sex is for -- reproduction and the strengthening of love within a relationship that wishes to and is capable of raising and teaching new life. Our society has completely divorced sex from procreation, and as a result, greatly devalues the act. We are moving 100% in the wrong direction on the subject; the Church is right, and our society is simply wrong. It is that easy. It is that simple.