The media presents us today with a typical non-story that tells us two completely unsurprising things about the Roman Catholic Church. A) The results of its family survey reveal that millions of Catholics ignore doctrinal teachings on sex and contraception and B) the Church wishes to show greater tolerance to those in broken or non-heterosexual families.
The first proposition is so unremarkable as to be not worth remarking upon. Except to say that one of the chief causes of the laity’s ignorance of what their Church teaches on sex is down to the fact that – despite the media’s claims to the contrary – the Church never talks about sex. I have never once sat through a sermon in which a priest has railed against the evils of condoms or given an illustrated lecture on the benefits of the withdrawal method. Not that I would wish Fr MacKenzie to do either. But the fact that the laity’s family and religious lives are sometimes lived at odds with each other cries out for the Church to catechise them better, preferably in school.
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