The POPES: A Pastoral Plan is needed to combat moral and sexual nihilism that is destroying our youth and society

Pope Benedict XVI with innocent children after Sunday Angelus 

Toronto Catholic Witness's recent assessment of the perniciously evil influence that Facebook has over many of our Catholic youth, should mobilize us to action in combatting this cancerous carbuncle on the face of humanity. The abuse of Facebook is, of course, a symptom of a sick society. Its design, allows the impressionable, the foolish, the young person who has - perhaps due to various peer pressures - compromised, to easily be drawn into and become part of the contemporary crisis affecting marriage and the family. All of this directly attacks the Church and civilization. The innumerable examples of vulgarity and filth, being generated out of the minds of our "church going" young Catholic people tells us that the sense of sin is all but dead; that the Faith is undergoing an unprecedented crisis. What are we doing about it? What are you doing about it? Our Catholic people no longer realize that indecency offends God. Why do Catholics refuse to listen to the voice of God through His Popes...

Pope John Paul II with an innocent baby

In an ad limina visit, by a group of American bishops, to Pope Benedict XVI, the holy Pope directed the bishops to a reference point laid out by his venerable predecessor, Pope John Paul II: that marriage and the family call for a: "full pastoral commitment to this particular area. Marriage and the family are institutions that must be promoted and defended from every possible misrepresentation of their true nature, since whatever is injurious to them is injurious to society itself” (Sacramentum Caritatis, 29). 

Pope Benedict went on to say: 

...there is an urgent need for the entire Christian community to recover an appreciation of the virtue of chastity. The integrating and liberating function of this virtue (cf.Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2338-2343) should be emphasized by a formation of the heart, which presents the Christian understanding of sexuality as a source of genuine freedom, happiness and the fulfilment of our fundamental and innate human vocation to love. It is not merely a question of presenting arguments, but of appealing to an integrated, consistent and uplifting vision of human sexuality. The richness of this vision is more sound and appealing than the permissive ideologies exalted in some quarters; these in fact constitute a powerful and destructive form of counter-catechesis for the young.

...young people need to encounter the Church’s teaching in its integrity, challenging and countercultural as that teaching may be; more importantly, they need to see it embodied by faithful married couples who bear convincing witness to its truth. They also need to be supported as they struggle to make wise choices at a difficult and confusing time in their lives. Chastity, as the Catechism reminds us, involves an ongoing “apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom” (2339). In a society which increasingly tends to misunderstand and even ridicule this essential dimension of Christian teaching, young people need to be reassured that “if we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, absolutely nothing, of what makes life free, beautiful and great” (Homily, Inaugural Mass of the Pontificate, 24 April 2005).


Children are the greatest treasure and the future of every society: truly caring for them means recognizing our responsibility to teach, defend and live the moral virtues which are the key to human fulfillment. 

ESSENTIAL READING: LETTER TO FAMILIES, POPE JOHN PAUL II