St. Pius Catholic Church

Hello Everyone,

Happy Tuesday!  I am finally caught up with all of my work since my little two week run around, which I talked about last week on the blog.  I want to thank everyone again for all their support and generosity, my grandmother thanks to everyone is going to have a ton of masses offered up for her soul.  I also thank everyone for their prayers and emotional support as well.  It has been amazing to watch and see how this community of faith has responded to all of our staff members losing loved ones over the past two months, thank you again.

This week we are getting ready for the upcoming priesthood ordinations in Peoria this Saturday, as one of our own from Saint Pius X, Rev. Mr. Paul Carlson, son of Dennis and Jill Carlson, will be ordained a priest of the diocese of Peoria.  Deacon Paul and I finalized plans for his first mass yesterday.  He is leaving later this morning to Peoria to begin a week long orientation/spiritual preparation with Fr. Brian Brownsey, our Vocations Director in Peoria.  Ordinations will be held at the Cathedral of Saint Mary in Peoria, on Saturday at 10:30am.  Both Fr. Schaab and I will be attending.  The ordinations are open to the public, so anyone from the parish interested can come down to Peoria.  Once ordained on Saturday, the then Fr. Carlson will come back to Saint Pius X and offer his first mass of thanksgiving at the 11am Mass this Sunday.  All are welcome to attend this Mass as well.  There will also be a lite reception afterwards at Farrell Hall open to the public.  So please come and celebrate with the parish.

Also being ordained a priest with Deacon Carlson is Deacon Jim Pankiewicz.  Deacon Jim and I went to seminary for 3 years together at Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland before I left to be ordained ahead of him.  Now he has finished his studies and is ready to be ordained.  Deacon Jim is an outstanding gentleman as well, like Deacon Carlson.  Deacon Jim is a history buff, has a great sense of humor, is a big jokester, kind hearted, and is the biggest Saint Louis Cardinals fan you have ever met.  I have no doubt in my mind that both of these gentlemen will be excellent priests and serve our diocese well.  Congratulations to them both.

Around the parish, we are happy to announce that this summer we will have a seminarian with us here at Saint Pius X.  His name is Scott Potthoff and he is from Spring Valley, Illinois.  Spring Valley, is just outside of LaSalle-Peru, Illinois.  Scott just completed his 1st Theology year at Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland and God willing will be ordained a priest for the Peoria diocese in three more years in 2013.  Scott is a nice guy who I think everyone will enjoy having around all summer long.  He reports to Saint Pius X this Friday to begin his apostolate here with us.  Please stop bye and say hello, and introduce yourself to seminarian Scott sometime this summer, I am sure that he would like to meet everyone in the parish.  Welcome to Seminarian Scott Potthoff.

Some might be saying to themselves, that looks like the ghost of Fr. Charles around the parish this week.  Well its not a ghost, we are happy to welcome back Fr. Charles, our guest priest from Uganda, who was with us last year for 9 months.  Fr. Charles came back to the Quad Cities to visit and say hello to everyone, before he begins work on his doctorate in school administration.  So if you happen to see Fr. Charles around, stop bye and say hello.

Otherwise than that there is not a whole lot else to report at this time.  This week in my little lesson section I have posted an article on why pre-marital sex is morally not acceptable and why one should wait until marriage for a sexual relationship.  As I said last week, this summer I will be posting about many different controversial topics and why the church teaches what it does in regards to these topics all summer long, so please check back and learn throughout the summer.

Till next week.

In Christ,

Father Peter Zorjan
Assistant Pastor at Saint Pius X
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(This article was completely written by David MacDonald, a Catholic apologist from Canada, and taken off of his website, the full website citation is given at the end of the article)

What's wrong with sex before marriage? Why Choose Chastity?By: David MacDonald

If I go into a grocery store and want to choose a good apple I can pick it up and look at it but I can't take a bite out of it then put it back.  Having sex before marriage is taking a bite out of the apple before committing to it (buying it), leaving it for the next person.  If I have sex with someone before marriage, I am likely having sex with someone else's future wife.  I've been there.

Ugly statistics - how's it working?

* The National Post reports the 25% of girls 15-25 years old have venereal warts (HPV). Transmission is not prevented by condoms. It is a pre-cursor to cervical cancer. The daughter of a friend of mine ended up with ovarian cancer from HPV and may never be able to have children. HPV is incurable. The virus is permanent and the vaccine, Gardasil, doesn't fix it.

* In the first 5000 years of civilization less than 20 STI's became common. That's about one every 250 years. In the last 40 years the number of common STI's has skyrocketed to over 60. That's a rate of 1 STI/yr since North American young people started having sex before marriage, an increase of 25,000% (that's not a typo).

* Teenager girls who have sex are 2x more likely to commit suicide than girls who practice abstinence. ("Point of View" Dec 10, 2004)

* Teenage boys who have sex are 7x more likely to commit suicide than boys who are sexually abstinent. (ibid)

* Girls who have abortions are 6x more likely to commit suicide than those who don't.


Why don't condoms reduce Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI's)?

There has been a firestorm over Pope Benedict's comments about condoms. Edward C. Green PhD, a senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health said:

"The Pope might be right...In 2003, ... the University of California conducted a condom effectiveness study for the U.N.'s AIDS program and found no evidence of condoms working as a primary measure in HIV-prevention in Africa ....Since then, major articles in other peer-reviewed journals such as the Lancet, Science and BMJ have confirmed that condoms have not worked as an intervention in the population-wide epidemics of Africa"

The press says Catholics are “old fashioned” and “dangerous” to think that chastity and monogamy are the answer for Africa. I’m still waiting for them to come up with a better idea. North America would rather bomb them with condoms than to look at our western immorality.

The "condom sense" strategy that taught in high schools, ignores human behavior, especially men's. Thinking about condoms in the middle of sexual arousal is counter intuitive and unsuccessful. Yet condoms provide a false sense of security because the couple will say "hey, we can have sex because we have protection." The truth is that men don't like using condoms and when both partners are aroused, lust takes on a life of its own, and their intentions to use condoms are often thrown by the wayside. Even if they do have "safer-sex," once they feed the lust, there is a much greater chance that they will practice unsafe sex at some point. In scientific circles this is called "risk compensation behavior." I've been there.  If you don't believe that arousal clouds logic, try doing some math problems then next time you are aroused! Or better still, just avoid lust altogether.

Although condom packages say they are 95% effective at stopping pregnancy, these studies are conducted in labs. Not many people have sex in labs. Real world studies show that couples having regular sex with condoms stand a 16% chance of pregnancy in any given year. If I got on a plane and they said, "Fasten seatbelts, this plane has an 84% chance of reaching its destination," I would get off the plane!

HPV transmission is not stopped by condoms. Condoms often break and are often used "improperly." Condoms are a "band-aid" solution that compound the current problems and don't address the real problem, our behavior. The "condom sense" strategy is based on the false premise that the solution to widespread sex is still more sex (using condoms) rather than taking a long sober look at what our society has become. Fr. Bob Bedard says "I would get laughed out of most high school classrooms if I simply stated that the answer to STI's is chastity, not condoms."

The Pill is Unhealthy

If a 15 year old boy goes into a doctor's office saying "I want to get the girls, I need muscles, can you prescribe steroids?" the doctor would say "that's not good for you, go to the gym instead." But if a 15 year old girl goes to a doctor and says. "I want to get the guys, can you give me the pill (steroids)" The doctor says "fine." If you ask me, this is part of society's systematic abuse of women. In the clinical trials for the pill they tried to make a pill for men and women. One man got slightly shrunken testicles and they completely abandoned all further tests with men. In the experiments for the pill, 3 women died and all they did was adjusted the dosage. To me this is abuse of women. Women still die from the pill. Sure it is a tiny percent but with 16 million women on the pill (in the US) even low deaths rates amount to an incredible injustice against women.

In the first year of use, 50% of women stop the pill because of side affects. The pill creates depression, lowers libido, makes women more irritable, and creates weight gain. The reason is that it makes the woman's body think it is in its first few weeks of pregnancy. And women in their first weeks of pregnancy have depression, lower libido, are more irritable, and gain weight. In a pregnancy these side effects go away. On the pill, these side effects go on indefinitely.

The pill may be an aborfacient. Pill manufacturers themselves say it works in 3 ways, (1) it stops ovulation, (2)the pill changes viscosity of mucus to inhibit travel, if there is a breakthrough ovulation, (3) Many health care professionals believe that the pill reduces endometrial receptivity, and therefore will reduce the chances of attachment of the fertilized egg (the little 1 day old baby) to the uterus wall. Source: Randy Alcorn found a paper entitled The effect of oral contraceptive pills on markers of endometrial receptivity (Somkuti, et al., Fertility and Sterility Vol. 65, No.3, pp. 484-488, 1996). referenced from http://www.aaplog.org/collition.htm

The pill is the result of an anti-life attitude. Many abortions occurs because of failed contraception by people who were not open to life, before they jumped into bed. Before I became Christian and cleaned up my life I had a girlfriend who was a medical doctor. She was on the pill and knew how to use the pill. She got pregnant while using the pill properly. In our secular mind set, abortion looked like the logical solution. It was the worst mistake I've ever made in my life.

What the heck is "fornication"?

I have a friend who started having sex with his girlfriend. He was interested in Christianity. He was going to a United Church and started a Bible study. He was over to my place and I asked how he reconciled his interest in Christianity with his sex life. He said there's nowhere in the Bible where it says not to have sex before marriage. He said he searched for it and couldn't find it. Then it struck me that he didn't know the meaning of "fornication." I pulled out a dictionary:

Fornication: Voluntary sexual intercourse other than between a married couple, especially where either person or both persons are unmarried. (Gage Dictionary)

His face dropped as I took him through verse after verse. (Mt: 15:19, Mk 7:21, Acts 15:20, 29, 21:25, 1 Cor 6:13, 18, Gal 5:19, Eph 5:3, Col 3:5, 1 Thes 4:3, Rev 2:14, 20-21, 9:21 etc...) It seems the Bible has a lot to say on this topic. It puts "sex before marriage" (fornication) right up there with the worst of sins of humanity such as murder, theft etc... Ouch!!!!

The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the Body, and God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? (1 Co 6:13)

"Fornication" sounds like such a stale archaic word that our generation doesn't even know what it means. It sounds outdated. But this is the genius of mass marketing. Sex sells... sex sells cloths, it sells movies, it sells magazines, it sells everything. Our present attitude towards sex is the result of mass marketing. Our generation believes they are thinking for themselves when having sex before marriage. But they are the product of mass media.

Sex is fun and free, Jesus was into fun and freedom, so why are you Catholics so uptight?

Now I can hear someone out there saying "common, sex is fun, God wants us to have fun...sexual freedom is great."

What the great dispute about is over the meaning of "freedom," Is freedom simply to do whatever you want to do? Or is real freedom the freedom to do what you ought to do? Now the herd of independent thinkers in the dominant western culture believes the first. It's simply being shackled to one's own passions and desires and impulses. (Fr. John Neuhaus explains, Oct. 12, 2003,  CNS news Sun Morning)

Jesus was not hung up on social conventions. He freely ignored stupid social conventions such as being forbidden to hang out with the Samaritans. But when it came to sex he was very serious. Why were Jesus and the apostles so uptight about sex when they were so radical about breaking down other social barriers? I think it is because they knew something that modern culture has forgotten.

Sex is powerful.  People are born from sex, people die from sex (STI's). If I get a powerful gift for Christmas, say a car, there are rules that keep me safe. I think it is the same with sexuality.

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence ... (Gal 5:1, 13-18)

Today, society considers the Catholic Church's views on sex "regressive, old fashioned and medieval". But "modern society" is more "regressive" than the Church. It is following Caligula in ancient Rome.

Perhaps the Church is Medieval, but if that is so, then modern society is Primal!

The #1 dance song hit a couple of years ago was:

    You and me baby, we ain't nothing but mammals
    So let's do it like they do on the discovery channel

Never before in history has mankind been so sex-centered.

Sex creates an eternal bond, and needs to be a lifetime partnership

Sex creates an unbreakable bond for eternity with the sex partner. (1 Cor 6:16) That's why it needs to happen only within the eternal bond of marriage. One reason so few people are capable of intimacy today is because that spiritual center of union with another person has been scattered in bits and pieces all over their previous partner's lives. They have been hurt and with each hurt they close down a little more. Honestly, that is exactly what happened to me until I eventually was incapable of commitment.

Sex before marriage means broken hearts and broken bonds. Broken hearts don't trust others as much. People with broken hearts don't trust themselves as much. People think they should take a partner out for a "test drive" before getting married. But this hasn't made it easier to learn if the person is compatible because couples having sex often overlook important differences cause the sex is good. People who live together before marriage have a higher divorce rate.

Sex Outside of Marriage means I'm Having Sex with Someone's Future Spouse

If we have sex with someone before marriage and then break up with them, we have had sex with someone's future spouse. The scary thing is that doesn't consciously bother many people today. Unfortunately, the net result is that marriage is much more fragile. Most couples who have had premarital sex with others don't stick together. The bonding and commitment necessary to maintain and sustain a marriage during the hard times just aren't there. Pre marital sex makes for "fair weather" marriages.

Catholic definitions:

    * Chastity:  No sex outside of marriage, sex is perfectly acceptable in the context of a marriage blessed by the Church.
    * Marriage: An unbreakable lifelong union between one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.
    * Celibacy: Abstinence from sex, and usually implies remaining single.

The Catholic Church has always asserted that chastity, or alternatively celibacy, are the correct expressions of our sexual natures [before marriage].  This is supported by the Bible.

The Catholic Church predicted the future of a contraception Society.

In the 1968 document "Humane Vitae," everybody felt like a bomb hit society. The Catholic Church was reaffirming its stance on contraception. In Section 6, Pope Paul VI makes several predictions. He said we would see:

   1. Lowering of morality, (check out today's afternoon soaps, talk shows, MTV)
   2. Disregard for physical and emotional well being of women by men. (internet porn)
   3. Government would use family planning for coercive purposes. (UN population control)
   4. Women would begin to treat their bodies as if they are machines. (Surrogate mothers, invitro fertilizations.)

Contraception paved the way to the "free sex" movement of the 1960's. In 70 years since contraception was accepted, we in modern society have become increasingly sex centered. Before I became Christian in 1987, I was as bad as anyone else - a Tom Cat. I was a musician on the road. I was involved with two abortions and had a string of broken relationships and infidelity. I'm not here to judge. Thank God for the freedom and forgiveness I've received in Jesus.

Source: http://www.davidmacd.com/catholic/chastity.htm