Priest: You’ve contracepted our parochial school out of existence by Fr. Timothy Sauppé Mon Jun 24, 2013 10:47 EST Abridged and republished from the Bellarmine Forum with the permission of the author June 24, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A stranger came into the sacristy after Sunday Mass. In an incriminating huff he said, “I have been away from the area for fifteen years; where are the people? And now you are tearing down the school? I went there as a kid.” I put my hands up to quiet him from further talking and I calmly said, “Let me ask you a question: How many kids did you have?” He said, “Two.” Then I said, “So did everyone else. When you only have two kids per family there is no growth.” His demeanor changed, and then he dropped his head and said, “And they aren’t even going to Mass anymore.” I never thought I would be asking that question, but since I had to close our parish school, I’ve grown bolder and I started to ask that question more often. When I came to my parish five years ago, the school was on its proverbial “last legs.” In its last two years we did everything we could to recruit more students, but eventually I had to face the fact that after 103 years of education the school was no longer viable. In one of the pre-closure brain-storming sessions with teachers, I was asked what to do to get more students. I replied, “Well, I know what to do, but it takes seven years.” The older teachers laughed, but the others needed me to state the obvious to the oblivious, viz. we need more babies. In my January 2010 letter to my bishop asking his permission to close our school, I wrote: Bishop, it is with a heavy heart that I request this of you. As you know, priests were not ordained to be closing grade schools, but we were ordained to be Christ in the midst of sorrow and pain, which will be happening as we come to accept both your decision and the inevitable fact that St. Mary’s Grade School is no longer viable. The efficient cause is simple….no children. The first cause is the habitual contraception and sterilization mentality of a good portion of married Catholic Christians–in short the Culture of Death. The final cause is the closure of Catholic Schools and parishes. Bishop, we need your leadership to address the contraception/abortion/sterilization mentality in as forceful a way as soon as possible. I, and St. Mary’s, closed the school that May 2010. Now three years later, I am razing the school building. It breaks my heart every time I go into this closed school. It is only 50 years old and yes, the windows and heating are in need of replacement, but otherwise the building is in good shape. You could not build as solid a building these days. There has not been a week without someone bringing the school closure and now razing up to me and how sad it is. But the cost of insurance and the cost of heating an empty building has become too burdensome for an aging and a decreasing congregation. A part of this decrease has happened because I have preached against the Culture of Death. I have modestly preached against contraception and sterilization, but for many of my parishioners it is too late. Most of them are done with raising more children. They have had their two kids twenty, thirty, forty years ago and some women don’t want to hear about the Culture of Death. They decide to go to other parishes where the pastor doesn’t prick their consciences. Fr. Sauppe in front of St. Mary's School as it is being torn down I am reminded of a diocesan official in his talk to us young pro-life, pro-family priests twenty years ago. He said, “Yes, you can preach against abortion and contraception, but remember, you have to put a roof over your churches.” Now, our diocese is closing and merging these same parishes, but you know what—they all have good roofs. Pastors, if the demographic winter or bomb seems someone else’s problem, try this at your parish as I recently did at mine. I took the last ten burials and printed out their obituaries. At Sts. Peter and Paul Cemetery we had six men and four women with an average age of 80 years. With the ten, I counted the number of siblings for a total of 45 and divided by 10 which came to 4.5 children per family. Then I counted the ten’s children and divided by ten. The next generation had 28 kids which I divided by ten and came to 2.8 per family. I then moved on to the third generation, the grandchildren. These ten deceased had 48 grandchildren from their 28 children. When dividing these numbers, I came to a figure of 1.714 per family. The national average number of children per household is 1.91; while the replacement level is 2.1 children per family. I don’t claim to have answers on how to turn around a dying parish or diocese. In fact, I am more at a loss as to what to say than ever before. To defend the Church’s teaching against contraception and sterilization is like going back to ancient Rome and warning them about the dangers of indoor lead plumbing. No matter what you would say their only response back would come in various levels of volume, “But it’s indoor plumbing!” In other words, no matter the real threat to one’s physical health from contraception and sterilization, the immediate perceived benefits outweigh the moral and physical downside. And, if there is contraceptive failure, i.e., a baby, women must have access to abortion; and if a couple is infertile, they can always create babies–in vitro. Having grown up in the 60‘s and 70‘s with many “Don’t call me Father” Priests, I knew that the problem was a lack of orthodoxy. Twenty years ago when I was ordained, I thought that if I just preached the faith and celebrated a solemn Sunday Mass people would turn around. But, after twenty years, my experience is that a few parishioners will write letters to the Bishop, some will leave murmuring, but the standard fare is benign indifference. Instead of encountering joy and submission to the Natural Law and the Church’s teaching on human life and its dignity, I have found Catholic Christians either complacent or complicit with the Culture of Death. It was reported that over fifty percent of Catholics voted for a pro-abortion president who at a recent Texas Planned Parenthood convention asked God to bless them. If I have found any fruit, it has mostly come from home-schooling families. Click 'like' to support Catholics Restoring the Culture! I have become convinced that there is a connection, a direct correlation, between contracepting or sterilizing one’s fertility that parleys into an infertile relationship with Jesus, the Divine Bridegroom. In other words, mortal sin is the ultimate barrier method when it comes to God’s gift of grace being implanted within our souls. It is known that Jesus expects us to be faithful in small things before He will entrust us with larger issues. What is smaller and yet has the greatest value than bringing new life into the world? The realpolitik, the sitz im leben, the situation on the ground, is that reproductive dissent has reached and surpassed a critical mass. Whether we are talking within or outside the church, tacit support is given to the culture of death when we don’t support the Natural Law against all unnatural sexual actions. Sometimes I feel like the Slim Pickens character from the 1964 movie, Dr. Strangelove, where he is riding the falling nuclear bomb; he, waving a cowboy hat; me waving a biretta. (If not a biretta, perhaps a sixty degree sand-wedge.) What I should be doing instead is to try to defuse the demographic bomb; but the thing is, “God always forgives, man sometimes forgives, but nature….nature never forgives!” If the vast majority of Catholics chose to contracept and sterilize themselves into the dust bin of history, what can God do? Of course, God could cause a miracle conversion a la the Prophet Jonah and Nineveh; or, the miracle of when God ordered Ezekiel to prophecy over the dead bones that then came together as he was prophesying– however, Ezekiel at least had bones to “work” with. What can a priest/pastor do when there is a congregation with a contraceptive/ sterilization mentality? Should he tell them to repent and have a reversal of the vasectomy or tubal ligation? If that fails, should he encourage his flock to adopt or become foster parents? Should he not be promoting Natural Family Planning which uses the best of science to help couples to be fruitful–not to mention ecological breastfeeding (cf. http://www.NFPandmore.org)? Of course, he should be doing all of these remedies and more, but at the very least he should be doing what the Curé de Ars, St. John Vianney did: fast, pray, eat potatoes for his people, his sheep. Take note that the Bishops of Great Britain have returned to Friday abstinence from meat as a corporate witness to bodily discipline and penance. Priests should be personally doing at least this much. (In the U.S., few even know that the guideline is that we should offer something up on Fridays, not necessarily meat.) Could something like what happened in England happen in the U.S.? Cardinal Burke says not to wait for a national statement. In an exclusive interview with his Eminence, Rome correspondent for LifeSiteNews.com (April 23, 2013) Hilary White reported that, “The bishops of the world must, as individuals, take the lead in combating the Culture of Death, and not wait for the national conferences.” Further, she quotes his Eminence as saying that, “It should be emphasized that the individual bishop has a responsibility in this matter. Sometimes what happens is the individual bishops are unwilling to do anything because they wait for the national bishops’ conference to take the lead.” Well stated your Eminence! Amen, alleluia! Again, I do not know how to defuse the current demographic bomb we are collectively riding. While the Church does challenge faithful Catholics to be open to life and to be fruitful in having children; something serious needs to be done. I believe Church historians will look back at this period of the post-Vatican II era and call it by some moniker–please LORD let it not be an unfortunate one. Whatever this period will be called it seems like we, as the Church, are living through a mass protest revolution; albeit perhaps unconscious, and perhaps unthinking, but we have done so, willingly. The flock is listening to a deceptive voice of a deceiving shepherd when it comes to not having many children or keeping with sexual purity. My purpose with this article is not to throw stones, but to have an honest discussion regarding the state of the Church–”a voice in the desert.” At the beginning of his pontificate Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said, “The Church as a whole and all her Pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance.” (Mass of Imposition of the Pallium, April 24, 2005) He repeated these words in his opening to this Year of Faith. (cf. Porta Fidei, Oct. 11, 2012) As shepherds and pastors of souls, priests and bishops must be willing to cast our nets in waters that may seem unsafe or unwelcoming. But if we do not go out into the deep, we may find that the shallows have all been fished out. Yes, pastors must open the Doors of Faith, but we ourselves must be willing to walk in first. If we, the shepherds, are unwilling to defend the Natural Law against the onslaught of secularism, how can we expect the flock to do so? The experience of closing and now razing a school is one I do not want to repeat. For if a bishop or a priest hates closing a school, he is really going to hate closing a parish. In the midst of this Year of Faith, let us pray to the Holy Spirit to lead us out of this desert, this demographic winter, into a new Springtime and may Our Lady, the undoer of knots, open up our hearts to the love of God the Father and His Son, Jesus, and the love of new life in the Holy Spirit. Amen! This article has been abridged for publication on LifeSiteNews.com, to view the full article please visit the Bellarmine Forum. Fr. Timothy Sauppé, S.T.L. is pastor of St. Mary’s Church, Westville, Illinois, in the Diocese of Peoria.

Hello there friends, Tony Abbott has done it again. He got Rudd sacked just prior to the 2010 election and now Gillard sacked just prior to this 2013 election. ALP has brought back what may well be the biggest traitor in Oz political history now, given he sabotaged the 2010 election campaign with deadly leaks and since then has been plotting to knife a woman who was our first female pm in the back to get the top job. She was his PM too. KR is the worst traitor ever seen in this country and against his own party and pm. ALP is an absolute joke. Even with an unprecedented massive honeymoon that anyone could have gotten realistically, ALP will be convincingly beaten. ALP has enthroned the one man in this world they hate the most. How desperate is that? A joke desperate. That much. The Rudd experiment is already showing cracks, soon to be the grand canyon, where the ALP will be lost forever within, perhaps. Tony Abbott is quite extraordinary and his demolition of the ALP yet again makes him the most successful opposition leader this country has ever seen in politics. True talent. He has not only got labor to sack a second pm but bring back the one man they hate most in the process. He has caused half or so of ALP’s cabinet to resign / retire. ALP policy is a complete shambolic mess. The ALP and NSW branch is in absolute tatters needing radical reconstructive surgery. KR is putting on a show and some are impressed hey! The ALP is nearly dead and on life support. The only thing keeping the ALP alive is that Tony Abbott and the coalition are yet to really send out their message loud and clear. It includes ridiculous debt and a deficit that would make Greece blush if we are honest. Complete dysfunction and chaos in a party seen in policy stuff ups like school halls, pink batts, mining tax, carbon tax and the list is endless. The KR circus is in town and dazzling many with bright lights. But now, soon, the lights will be put out and then KR and the ALP will be shown to be all hollow air and noise and nothing but complete chaos and dysfunction, and then voters incl last min and swing voters will romp home for the coalition. ALP has no record worth noting and no real plan for the future. Just smoke and mirrors. Tony Abbott has KR’s number I think you will find. As he did last time when he got KR sacked. ALP is a union party and hence full of self interest and activists and lobbyists. Not capable of proper govt. None have any real exp running a business, and running a country is far harder than running 1,000′s of diff businesses all at once incl large multinationals, and there is a lot more to manage also. LNP have the answers and a great team this time around. They have great heads and not bad hearts either. ALP try to be all heart, and this is admirable. But you need a good head with tons of common sense too. You need the very best and brightest to run a country like this. A diverse mix of talent if you are to be successful. And Tony Abbott has the team and what it takes. Don’t believe polls as we have not seen the replies and allowed Tony Abbott myth buster to blow away the mirage. I pick a poll of high 50%’s on election day to the coalition. You would be game to think otherwise too. A formidable man Tony Abbott, and a team to be reckoned with. Watch out for Tony Abbott, as he is about to strike again. ALP is extremely weak with the right strategy from LNP, and will wipe the floor with them. This is my first post here. I imagine many will dislike it. I just tell the truth as I see it dear friends. ALP need time in the sin bin, at least. ALP has lost all credibility in reality, also lost — dignity, integrity, honour, honestly, trustworthiness, decency, and they don’t give a fair go or play by the rules. They need a big time out. Thx for your time and bye for now. Viva la LNP !!!