America Magazine and me

By now it’s a hot topic around St. Blog’s that the editor of America Magazine has resigned, or been sacked, (I’ve read it both ways.) You can visit the America Magazine web site here.

I can only offer how that magazine has impacted my own life as a Catholic. In April or 2003 I was playing with our Music Ministry during a regular Sunday mass. We had just settled in for the homily and he grabbed my attention immediately because he was going to actually speak on a sexual moral issue!! Most unusual in our parish where our weekly fare is heavy on the social justice side. So as I listened I was surprised and the stunned to hear Father say that only with great prayer and meditation could a couple then go ahead and use contraception! He further went on about different parts of the magesterium and then something about the bishops of Canada (which I later learned was the infamous Winnipeg statement)and it was all very confusing. Mr. Pete and I looked at each other from different parts of the churh as if to say, “What? is he nuts?”

Equally surprising is the response of my fellow parishioners, which was something akin to a collective yawn. I found out later that many of them didn’t really know what he was talking about and when he started to discuss Canada they sort of tuned him out. Other folks, who I consider to be very sincere Catholics, didn’t think it was a big deal. They truly believed that the church taught that for reasons of prayer you could actually use artificial contraception!! When I asked for catechism citations on that it was then their turn to be stunned.

After that mass I had a very civil but a little scary confrontation with father after mass. And in response to the progressives who may find it in bad form to confront my pastor after mass, I plead the conscience clause. I absolutely couldn’t let it go without saying something, particularly with another mass coming up in an hour. But that’s another story.

What this episode lead us to was to investigate some of the resources in our church library only to find that America Magazine had a prominent spot- complete with archived back issues. There were no issues of Catholic Answers, or Lay Witness, or other periodicals, just America magazine and in its pages I could find the food for thought that was guiding my pastor’s weekly homilies including this one.

My pastor and I are still friends. He’s basically a good guy and I think he has a deep spirituality. He tries to be a good father to all of his flock, and he has attempted to introduce some materials on Catholic teaching regarding contraception and NFP etc. He has not done another homily on that topic since then . But I sure wish he would diversify his reading materials. Maybe this incident will help.

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