Last week’s topic was about Pope Paul VI predictions in his encyclical on Human Life. Fifty years ago, he made dire predictions about human society if contraception was widely embraced, and they have come true. He made these predictions based upon Natural Law. I am going to attempt here to give a brief explanation of how Natural Law applies. Natural Law says that every good is ordered to a good end. For example, we experience thirst and want to drink. This is good. Why? Because we need hydration (water) to live. If we do not drink, we die. When we are thirsty, we experience drinking as a pleasure. Pleasure is not the “good end” to our drinking. The good end is we keep living. Drinking is ordered to life. If it becomes ordered to pleasure, we call it “disordered” and it can result in death. Take eating. We are hungry and we eat. It is a pleasure. But it is ordered to life. If we don’t eat, we die. If we eat only and always for pleasure…or…don’t eat for another reason, we call this disordered. You are probably familiar with the term, “eating disorder.” Eating is a pleasure, but it is ordered to life. If we don’t eat, we die. Okay, now take sexual copulation. It is a pleasure but is also order to life. No sexual copulation, no life. By attempting to remove the pro-creative purpose, idea or focus of copulation and order it exclusively to pleasure has the same result as drinking and eating only for pleasure, it becomes disordered. This whole attempt to reconfigure the purpose of sexuality has resulted in the multitude of sexual disorders we now see in our culture, and it is daily getting worse. Being talked up now is the acceptance of M.A.P. orientation. What is that? Minor attracted persons. We used to call this pedophilia or perversion. Now you see why they want children to decide what their orientation is without consulting parents. This is really getting perverse! You see it is artificial contraception that has created the myth that sexuality can be just about pleasure with no thought of consequences. This myth reigns supreme in our culture. Along with all the other crazy stuff going on related to sexuality, it is a direct factor in the horrible scandal of the Church right now. I am very aware that this makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but it must be said because it is the truth. Yours in Christ. Fr. Sid.