Every time I worship at Mass I listen to a list of prayers recited at the Prayer of the Faithful. Or at least I ought to listen. Perhaps it is more realistic to say that the prayers that are read always impact on my eardrums and sometimes are listened to with due attention. Perhaps part of my problem is that the readers are not always the best, and perhaps an even bigger part is that the prayers are so frequently the same that I’ve heard a zillion times before. I agree that we need to pray for our Church leaders and our government leaders. Who can hear the news and not see their need for divine help? On the other hand, there are several key issues that are always in the news in one way or another, and yet I almost never hear a prayer for these great needs.
Take chastity, for example. The papers almost daily treat us to some social ill that is the result of unchastity. It might be health related as with sexually transmitted diseases or increases of breast cancer or prostate cancer related respectively to the Pill and to vasectomy. Or it might be the social and educational problems in schools where so many of the students come from households with no father present. Or it could be another sad statistic dealing with abortion. How well the media covered the 4,000th death of an American military person in Iraq, but how consistently it ignores the 4,000 deaths of American babies being killed EACH DAY by their own mothers. So may I suggest a Prayer of the Faithful like this: “For a rebirth of chastity, for a stop to contraception, for a stop to abortion, and for a culture of life, let us pray to the Lord.” Implicit in that is a prayer that engaged couples will be chaste and that married couples will be generous in having children and use only systematic natural family planning if and when they need more spacing than they derive from ecological breastfeeding. And that of course implies a prayer that they will do eco-breastfeeding for all sorts of good reasons.
Another glaring omission is prayer for authentic reform and renewal in the Church. The key word here is “authentic.” For more than 40 years we have been treated to “renewal” that amounts to shuffling the card tables on the Titantic. Church attendance is way down from before Vatican II, etc. The renewal of moral theology that was supposed to move us from acting out of fear of losing God to acting out of love for the Law of Christ has been an utter failure. Popes have testified that what has been lost has been a sense of sin. Titular Catholics in public life can promote the pro-abortion agenda and yet receive Holy Communion from bishops and cardinals. It is not a pretty sight. The need for authentic reform and renewal in the Church is obvious to anyone who takes Christ and the Catholic Church seriously. So here’s a suggested Prayer of the Faithful: “For authentic reform and renewal within the Church, let us pray to the Lord.”
Many Catholics pray the rosary daily or at least frequently. Many of us do so specifically because of the requests of our Lady at Fatima in 1917. Should we mention the intentions for which we are praying? Our Lady asked us to pray the rosary for world peace, for the conversion of Russia, and for the conversion of sinners throughout the world. Many of us have all sorts of other intentions for which we pray. We take a few moments or minutes to mention them at least mentally. Should we also specifically include the intentions for which Mary asked us to pray? I mean, as I understand it, she didn’t just ask us to pray the rosary; she asked us to pray the rosary for those specific intentions. It’s obviously just my personal opinion, but it seems to me that we should take the few seconds it takes to include those Fatima intentions before we pray the rosary.
Lastly, a personal request. Please pray for Sheila and me and for the work of Natural Family Planning International. Developing this organization and its materials to carry on the teaching of the classic content of the Triple Strand is true work. It has both its joys and its difficulties. This past week we completed our second series of classes, and that was a source of joy. The couples clearly showed that they “got it” on the rules, etc. There is also reason to believe that they got it regarding the more important aspects of the faith-based course.
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Peace.
John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant: A Basis for Morality