Bishop Burke on the Dignity of Human Life and Civic Responsibility

Bish Burke has issued a pastoral letter on the duty of every one of the faithful to promote the culture of life in politics. He wrote the letter at the same time that he released a decree that local Catholic politicians who support abortion or euthanasia may not receive Communion in the diocese until they publicly denounce their positions.

A 'PDF' versions can be found at the Diocese of LaCrosse website here.

Zenit has a text version here.

Pay particularly close attention to this:

"The port of entry for the culture of death in our society has been the abandonment of the respect for the procreative meaning of the conjugal act. It is the contraceptive way of thinking, the fear of the life-giving dimension of conjugal love, which very much sustains that culture." He quotes Pope John Paul II (Evangelium Vitae, n. 13): "[T]he pro-abortion culture is especially strong precisely where the Church's teaching on contraception is rejected".

Perhaps Catholics may begin to learn that artificial contraception is sinful and that one may not appeal to to one's malformed conscience in determining right and wrong? Of course, priests may have to speak about this in an homily, perhaps at the risk of losing some less than faithful 'Catholics'.