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	1st Reading
	Psalm
	2nd Reading
	Gospel
	Written Transcript of Homily
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You know, some of you perhaps may of heard me on the radio.

I’m a frequent guest....

On the Chuck Neff show....

Which is renewed on Relevant Radio.... [find more info at RelevantRadio.Com]

And I think I’m a rerun sometimes.

I remember Chuck Neff once said:

“You know, Fr. Rich, we always enjoy having you on because we never know what you’re going to say.”

To which I said:

“Neither do I, Chuck.... neither do I.”

You know.... on that show....

Mr. Neff has a button on his counsel....

This is something people don’t know about radio that....

There’s a ten or twenty second delay in radio.

In other words, you hear what I’m saying ten or twenty seconds later....

Because if I say anything really stupid....

He can press the button on his desk and go to commercial.

Unfortunately, there is no button in the pew.... or on the pulpit....

And I.... to be quite honest.... I'm not usually nervous in the pulpit... 

But.... I’m kind of nervous today..... because of what I want to talk about.

Because it touches your life in a way that perhaps you would rather not have your life touched.

It’s not a pleasant topic I wanna talk about.

But on the other hand.... 

Well.... life is too short to be too polite.

I remember there was a guy.... a dear....

A father of a dear friend of mine.... who was not Catholic.

And he... his son was a classmate of mine... wanted to be.... was a priest.....

They thought his dad wanted to enter the Church before he died.

And this priest was not going to hear his dad’s confession....

And he asked me if I would come and broach the topic....

And hear his confession and profession of faith.

And.... so I sat down.... and we talked for a few minutes....

And this man.... this is just awful....

But.... this man was clearly about to die and.... 

And he was a good old southern farm boy.... he sort of had that kind of rural accent....

And what you saw with him was what you got.

And I said:

“Well sir, I don’t have much time, and neither do you. Would you like to be a Catholic?”

And he said:

“I thought you’d never ask.”

So five minutes later he was a Catholic and received his First Communion.

So.... I learned from that that sometimes life is too short to be excessively polite.

And I wanna talk about an important.... important anniversary that we celebrated this week.

But I want.... before I launch into it....

And I guarantee this is not going to be easy for me....

And probably not terribly easy for you.

Solomon had a vision of the Lord.... in a dream.... and the Lord said:

“Ask something of me.... and I will give it to you.”

Solomon answered:

“Give your servant an understanding heart to judge your people - to distinguish right from wrong.”

The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked this.

So God said to him:

“Because you asked for this.... "

"Not long life for yourself.... nor for riches.... nor for the life of your enemies.... "

"But for the understanding that you may know what is right... "

"I will give you what you want.... a heart - wise and understanding."

Then in the Psalm response that we read after....

“Lord I love your commands. Oh Lord, I love your law.”

This is what you said - I heard you say it, well we sang it.

You know.... I’m kind of big on paying attention to what we’re saying.... and singing.

You realize that you all just sang, “Lord, I love your law.”

Do you now?

With those things read.... 

Forty (40) is a very important number in the Bible.

You may have noticed that there is an odd use of numbers....

Numbers are part of God’s vocabulary....

They have symbolic meanings....

For instance, Seven (7) is a sign of a covenant....

Ten (10) is a number that has to do with divinity....

And Forty (40) is a number that has to do with testing....

With testing....

We have forty days and nights of rain.

We have forty days in the ark and forty more.

We have forty days in the wilderness of Sinai.

We have forty days in the desert.

These are signs of testing.

Why does God test us?

God knows what we are like.

He doesn’t need to test us.

The people with whom we live.... know what we are like.

I’m sure I’ve told you this....

That sometimes I sit in the confessionals and people will say:

“Bless me father.... I blew up a bank.... but let me explain.”

I’m exaggerating, of course....

Remember the seal of confession.... 

And no one has ever said that to me:

“Bless me father, I blew up a bank, but let me explain.”

I always want to say, “Don’t explain to me.... I don’t care that you blew up...."

"It wasn’t my bank you blew up.... Explain to God...."

"Try and see if you can make Him figure out why you should blow up a bank.”

We are tested..... so that can know who we are.

I would never do that.

Oh yeah?

Wait until you get into the situation, then we’ll see what you’re gonna do.

And so often we look down on those who are sinners......

And then God puts us in their situation.... and we join them in their sin.

God tests us.... to prove who we are.... that knowing who we are we may repent and be saved.

Forty (40) is the number of testing.

Now take a deep breath.... cause here goes....

Friday... we celebrated forty years.... to the day....

That Paul the Sixth published the Encyclical "Humanae Vitae".

The encyclical that deals with artificial birth control.

Like I said, I don’t want to talk about this.

Now all of us make decisions of conscience.

We do the best we can with what we have.

So, I want you to kind of not look at yourself for a minute.

Those of you who I know well, I respect.

Hearing your confessions as I do I am only impressed by the sanctity of my congregation.

You are people that I generally like and respect.

And most of you seem to like and respect me.

So I don’t wan you to think that what I’m about to say that I am laying down the law, or condemning anyone for what they did - especially if they did it in good conscience.

But to not discuss these things is to bury our head in the sand.

Am I your friend if I do not tell you about the danger that stands behind you?

For instance, if we were out in the woods, and a great grizzly bear was standing behind you, and I decided not to tell you because well, I didn’t want to upset you, would I be your friend?

I don’t want to upset you.

It makes my life difficult when I upset you.

But to not warn you of great danger.. and a great need of repentance... I would be remiss as your pastor.

Well... we have been tested for forty years.
 
 

Those of you who are as old as I am can remember forty years ago.

Remember 1967, the summer of love?

Good old Haite-Ashbury?.

You remember years before that.... the 50's .  Can you remember, those who are as old as I, your first television set?

And hula hoops?

And poodle skirts?

Nothing as gorgeous as a girl in a poodle skirt.

..I don’t know why...

All those things... the innocence and optimism of those 20 years after the Second World War.

It was good.

Gas was cheap, the cars were fast, and those of us who were Catholic and Americans, well, we really felt that we were doubly blessed.

And then there was the Vatican Council, and we had this feeling... those of you who are young, I don’t think this makes sense to you, but we, the old people... we had this feeling that now everything was going to be wonderful.

That we would recover the dynamism of the early Church somehow.

We would scrap away all the senseless rules and regulations, the out-moded customs and superstitions that had held us back.

Then God decided to show us who we were.

And John Paul the II, or rather,  Paul the Sixth, introduced "Humanae Vitae", in which he re-emphasized the Catholic Church’s prohibition on artificial means of birth control.

And Paul the Sixth, was mocked and laughed at - the jokes were wonderful, you know?

They talked about natural family planning as Vatican roulette.

You know, oh the jokes were wonderful, and Paul the Sixth out moded.

He convened a panel of experts.

They advised him to embrace the modern world.

And what did he do?

He said no.

The Catholic Church isn’t going to change on this.

And the response of the clergy of America was a full throated “NO”

"We will not obey!"

The clergy of America, of whom I am a member, were revealed for who they are.

Rebellious and corrupt.

You see the purpose of testing... the forty years... is to reveal to me who I am.

And it was clergy first who were tested.

And by-in-large we failed miserably.

And we showed who we were.

We would not obey.

We were rebels.

And many of us were worse than rebels - we were corrupt.

Interested only in our own pleasures and in our own status.

Well, I’m embarrassed to say it, but my teachers, when they, in the seminary, heard the news of "Humanae Vitae", that Paul the Sixth was not going to let the Church enter the modern world, they dedicated themselves to teaching us how to help people think their way around that encyclical.

Because you see Catholics believe, and it’s  the doctrine of the church, and always has been, that though something may be gravely sinful in itself, unless you are completely free and you are completely aware of the gravity of the sin... well, you are not culpable of mortal sin.

So who’s ever free?

Some woman with ten children, is she free?

And so on... and you know...

I don’t want to go into this, because this sermon is going to be unpleasant enough, but if you can think your way around one sin, you can think your way around any sin.

And we priests became adept at thinking our way around sin.

Well, there were two great objections to the Pope’s policy.

First of all, the spiraling world population.

I mean, the world can’t support that many people, so the argument went.

The planet is increasingly polluted.

The environment is increasingly degraded!

That was an argument.

But I would, I would point out to you there are two nations who have successfully controlled their population: the United States and the People’s Republic of China.

And they are, I suspect, the two greatest polluters in the world.

You see, it isn’t children that cause pollution.

It’s machines that cause pollution.

And it seems the fewer children we have, the more money we have to buy the machines.

I look at someone driving a hummer... alone... or an SUV... and they have just themselves and their chihuahua in it.

Children don’t cause pollution.

Machines do.

Traditional societies, agrarian societies lived in much greater harmony with the earth than we do.

But the real argument, the real argument...

Father, you have no idea what it is like to raise a child.

How dare some Bishop in some foreign land tell me how many children I should have!

And therein lies the real rub, does it not?

Well... because of circumstances in my life... and in my family.

I know more than some clergy what it’s like to raise children.

And to raise children... now, the little dears, you love ‘em; there are number of children in the congregation here, we love ya.

You’re wonderful.

So don’t listen to the rest of this.

Raising children is unmitigated hell most of the time, isn’t it?

Ohhh, children make you crazy, especially in the modern age.

“I’m going out to play, Mom.”

“Do you have your helmet? Do you have your shin guards? Do you have your sunscreen on? Do you have your mosquito spray on?”

“I think I’ll just stay home and watch television, Mom.”

When I was a kid all the moms would send their kids out to play in the woods.

Go, go, enjoy.

Now you don’t do that.

Raising children is expensive. It is time consuming. It is what you do.

When you have children, well, that’s life.

Literally.

It is the rest of your life.

But the hardest thing about children is that to raise children is a non-stop broken heart, isn’t it?

It is.

It’s a non-stop broken heart.

You love them.

The joy of your life.

Then they go to that first day of school....

And they come home crying saying, "The other kids beat me up."
 
 

That teacher doesn’t like me.

I remember... one of my godsons, oh, his teacher just didn’t like him because he reminded her of her own kid whom she didn’t like.

That’s what she said.

This boy was being tormented by a woman who hated her own child.

There was nothing we could do.

We could pull him out from school to school.

Well, they grow up.

And every time they walk out the door part of you is watching the door until they come back in.

And then you send them off to college.

Oh, I remember another one of my godsons...

Called him, hadn’t talked to him in a while.

Nothing.

Called him again.

I called him all day.

Nothing.

Finally, I called his girlfriend.

She had been unable to reach him.

So she went over to his place in a panic.

I was sure something awful had happened to him.

Well, sure enough, he dropped his phone in the bathtub - his little cell phone.

But that was a day in hell.

You’ve all done that, you’ve all been there; you can’t get them on the phone, they're in a distant place...

Raising children is a heartache.

And it is easier, quite frankly, well, to have a second car.

Paul the Sixth was a prophet.

I wanna read you something from an article by Mary Abustastas.

It’s from a magazine called “Crisis”. No, not “Crisis”, it’s “First Things”.

It is about, the title of the article, it is an August/September issue of “First Things” it’s 'The Vindication of Humanae Vitae'.

“In the year since Humanae Vitae's appearance, numerous distinguished Catholic thinkers have argued using variety of evidence that each of these predictions has been borne out by social “ – oh, I’m sorry, I’m reading one paragraph too far down.

“Lets begin by meditating, upon what might be called the first of the secular ironies because these are things reported by secular sociologists, not by Christian thinkers; the first of the secular ironies now evident. Humanae Vitae specific predictions about what the world would look like if artificial contraception became widespread.  The encyclical warned for four resulting trends: a general lowering of moral standards throughout society;  a rise in infidelity; a lessening of respect for women by men; the coercive use of reproductive technologies by governments." 
 

 Let's look at those again.  Four things:
 

The lowering of moral standards.

Is there anyone who doubts this who remembers the 50's?

Did you ever think you’d lived to see marriage redefined?

To see nudity on your television?

Did you ever think you would live to see the disrespect for the human body?

And the absolute casualness of sexual activity?

Second, a rise of infidelity.

When I was a boy I never knew of anyone who was divorced.

Now I practically don’t know anyone who is not divorced.

And do you know anyone, who before marriage, lives apart from the person they are about to marry?

And then, when that marriage breaks up, do you know of anyone who doesn’t move in with their prospective second, third or sometimes fourth partner?

Marriage is a joke.

A lessening of respect for women by men.

This is to me the greatest irony and horror...

Artificial contraception was to make women free.

And now women are anything but free.

Women are judged by success that is a joke.

If a woman decides she wants to stay home and raise her children, what will people say?

Oh, you’re JUST a mother?

Just a mother?

Just a mother??

Is there any title more sacred than mother?

Mary did not become the accountant of God.

She did not become the M.D of God

She became the Mother of God.

There is no more noble title in the world.

“Just a mother...”

What couple think they can maintain the standard of living to which we have become enslaved without two salaries?

Women are freer?

Well, you gotta work.

Who can pay their real estate taxes, without two people working.

Artificial contraception has freed women?

It’s enslaved them.

There has never been a feminist movement.

There has never been a feminist movement.

There has been a masuculinist movement.

Women are judged by things at which men excel.

You’re no one if you’re not a lawyer, or a doctor, or a professional.

Those things which men do... those were important.

What women did is unimportant.

To maintain, to raise children, to be a mother - those things aren’t important!

Now what men do is important.

There has never been a feminist movement.

But there has been a masculinst movement.

Men have not learned any of the virtues of women over the past 40 years.

And women have learned all the vices of men!

The coercive use of reproductive technologies by governments.

Well, we look at China, of course. Forced sterilization, forced abortion.

Then we look at India where there is practically a one child policy.

Then we look at this country, government from, by and for the people....

You are the government of this country...

The social pressure on women to limit children is phenomenal... in this country ...it is coercive.

Well, this must be a sign from God that I should shut up - my sermon fell on the floor.

But I’m not going to.

I, I really believe that Paul the Sixth was more than Pope when he wrote this, he was a prophet!

These things were forty years ago! Who could have envisioned this 40 years ago?!

The moral dangers to which the children you love are exposed.

And what is the real point, I suppose you’re asking this at this point in my sermon already; my real point is this:
 

  Not that, well, because of the bad advice of some rebellious clergymen decided it was legitimate to limit the size of your family with artificial contraception.
 

You made the best decision you could with what you had.

I don’t fault you, I fault us - the clergy.

But, that said, I ask you to look at the wider picture, to look at the wider society.

To look at what has happened to women.

To look at what has happened to marriage. To family!

And to question what the real meaning is!

Now I love this Country!

And I love her Constitution!

But I do not love what she has become, and what she continues to be!
 
 

The Declaration of Independence, our great founding doctrine, which said all men are endowed by their Creator to the right of life, of liberty,  to the pursuit of happiness.  But for those we read: my life, my liberty, my happiness! 
 

Paul the Sixth squarely reminded people of the vocation of the human being in "Humanae Vitae" - the vocation of every human being, whether they're young or old, married or single, is the transmission of human life, human life.  It isn't simply about life.  If this encyclical were about having babies, well, then, anything that produced a child would be moral.  That's not the point.

Human life.

St. Iraneaus of Lyon, one thousand eight hundred years ago, said that the life of man is the glory of God and the Glory of God is man fully alive.
 

Fully alive.

In the book of Wisdom, in the second chapter, we read: “Through the envy of the devil death entered the world.”

What has the devil got to be jealous about with me?!

Well, God shared something with humanity something that he did not share with the angels.

Angels do not reproduce.

They shall be like angels in heaven, neither giving or taking marriage.

Angels cannot reproduce.

God shared with humanity something he did not share with the angels.

A man and a woman with the collaboration of God can create something that is eternal.

A new life!

God has asked you to be a co-creator with Him.

That is our vocation.

To transmit human life... to safe guard the sanctity of the family...

The holiness of Marriage, the beauty of woman!

So that God’s greatest gift... God’s greatest creation.. Would flourish... And forty years ago... The Church, who thought she was in great shape, stood up and said, “NO, we will not obey!”

Well.... so here we are.

Forty years later.

That’s a lot of water under the bridge.

What do I do now..
 

   Well... we repent.
 

First of all, if you have never read "Humanae Vitae" I urge you to go home, turn on your computer,  and google up "Humanae Vitae"... h-u-m-u-n-a-e etc.

Have trouble finding it?

Call me.

And read it.

And then I ask you to take on the culture squarely.

And to do everything you can to let this country know that the Catholic vocation, what we as Catholics believe, is that the purpose of life is not the accumulation of property or the enjoyment of pleasure. 
 

It is the transmission of human life... that I may not have much, but my children are scared and my wife is sacred. My husband is scared.
 

That the purpose of my life is to live in those relationships.

The purpose of my life is to bring the faith to the next generation so that they can be fully alive.

I will give myself to anything that it takes for the education of children of the Faith.

It’s my dream that we will some day have a religious program; ours is fine for what we have, but, we could have something here that is... epic-making.

A place where young people learn the Faith.

There is so much that we can do to resist the culture.

And say, “ I do not believe that my purpose is the accumulation of property, but my purpose, as a Catholic, is to join God in the creative work of transmitting human life.”

You know... there is a third reason why I feel like I can speak about this...

I’ve been coming to Skokie since I was a little kid.

You know that?

It was my destiny to end up in Skokie.

My Dad was the only Catholic in his investment club and he was the treasurer.

And my mother and I would go to these investment meetings.

The kids would play in the basement, the women would klatch in the kitchen.

And the men would worry about the economy in the living room.

And the women would say to my mother when she said, when they asked how many children she had, “seven” - “seven? How could you have seven children?” She would look at them say, “Which one do you want me to send back?”

I was the seventh...

I would have been the one to send back.

But here I am.

I was the one, my brothers and sisters sought their fortunes in the great wide world -  only a couple of us stayed  in Chicago.

I was the one who had the most flexible schedule.

I was the one who did my mother’s shopping when she was old.

My mother and father believed that it was their duty to obey what God had said.

They had seven children and every time my mother got pregnant, my father would say to her, “How can we afford another child?”

And my mother would say, “God will provide.”

They loved God’s law more than they loved their own convenience.

God will provide.

And in my father’s working life he got seven raises.

One at the birth of each child.

God provided.

I was the child of my parent’s old age.

And admittedly, try your patience with my long sermons... and I’m not the most organized of men..

But if I have done you any good...

Sinner that I am...

As a priest, if I have done you any good, the debt you owe is not to me, but to my parents.

Whose bravery allowed me to be born.

Whose bravery allowed me to be born...

So... in your prayers.. remember  Helen and Waldo Simon, and if you are grateful for anything I have done for you I will ask you to remember them, so that they may have eternal rest.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.