Love in the ruins

Last Thursday, November 13, in an address for the John Paul II Institute at Catholic University of America, Cardinal Stafford made some very clear statements about the effects of the 2008 presidential election. Suffice to say, they weren’t dull.

The Cardinal reminded his audience that while fashions, music, and other trends have changed over the past 40 or 50 years, the Church’s teaching today on contraception and abortion is just the same as it was in 1968 and even before. He had strong words also for President-elect Obama who campaigned on an extreme anti-life platform: “aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic.” Unfortunately, the complete text of his address does not appear to be online yet; but here are some key points from the CUA newspaper:

Cardinal Stafford said Catholics must deal with the “hot, angry tears of betrayal” by beginning a new sentiment where one is “with Jesus, sick because of love.”

If 1968 was the year of America’s ‘suicide attempt,’ 2008 is the year of America’s exhaustion,” said Stafford, an American Cardinal and Major Penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary for the Tribunal of the Holy See. “In the intervening 40 years since Humanae Vitae, the United States has been thrown upon ruins.”
This destruction and America’s decline is largely in part due to the Supreme Court’s decisions in the  life-issue cases of 1973, specifically Roe v. Wade. Stafford asserted these cases undermined respect for human life in the United States.
“Its scrupulous meanness has had catastrophic effects upon the unity and integrity of the American republic,” said Stafford.

It’s a stark analysis, but it ends on a note that deserves much reflection:

Stafford said the truest reflection of the love between the believer and God is that of the relationship between husband and wife, and that contraceptive use does not fit anywhere within that framework.

According to Stafford, the inner dynamic of a spousal relationship is much like the body itself, which ‘speaks’ in terms of masculinity and femininity.