Pastor’s Corner — June 23rd, 2024
If You Missed it: Receiving Holy Communion…
A few weeks ago on the Feast of Corpus Christi, I preached a homily on what it means to receive Holy Communion worthily and reverently. In light of what Holy Communion actually means and in light of us having loved ones in and out of the Church who occasionally come to Mass, I think the points in this homily are important enough to say that if you missed the homily, I’d like to ask you to watch/listen to it. In addition to talking about the spiritual dispositions of faith necessary to receive communion, I also cover what the Church teaches about the normative postures the Church prefers as we receive communion. Knowing all of this helps us receive Jesus more fruitfully and lovingly.
(Also just an important point of clarification, deacons are also ordinary ministers of Holy Communion like priests are. I inadvertently left out that part when I addressed receiving Communion from extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion)
Can You Be Pro-Life and Pro-IVF?
The short answer is no. In fact, despite the real suffering of infertility and the beautiful desire to have children, most people are unaware of the devastating truths of what in-vitro fertilization (IVF) actually entails. In this article, Enshrining Abortion Via IVF, the authors criticize the position of two Senate Republican lawmakers and offering three links between abortion and IVF:
1) Both abortion and IVF treat human life in a callous, haphazard way. (IVF involves eugenics)
2) Abortion and IVF share the same false anthropology. (IVF gives adults, not God or the dignity of the child, the final say over the beginning of life)
3) Both abortion and IVF confound the purpose of sex by severing the tie between sex and reproduction. (This leads to disastrous consequences)
I encourage you to read the article. It’s honestly tough being consistent in our Christian moral principles today. But if an unborn child is really a child with infinite dignity, then being consistent in our logic is not just the right thing to do, it’s the most loving thing we can do.
To learn more about why IVF is wrong, please see this short video (5:18) by Fr Mike Schmitz and Jason Evert.
Your servant in the Lord,
Fr. Mathias