When your good Pastor, Fr. Andersen, asked me to help him so that he could get a vacation, I must say that I was reluctant because I have been retired for some years, and I will soon be in my 80th year. I just don't have the zip anymore, but I agreed to help him. I'll be here for the better part of three weeks. If I can help you in any way, please feel free to visit me.

Knowing that I would have to prepare sermons for the month of June I started early, about three weeks ago, and I asked myself, "What should I preach on?" I decided to speak on the same subjects that Pope John Paul was speaking on in the Benelux Countries - Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg - which means on the 5^th and 6^th Commandments. In the 26 countries that the Pope visited, he spoke on contraception, abortion, and infanticide in every one of the places, except Japan, where he was a very short time, and spoke on the horrors of nuclear war.

Now I can speak on the same subjects today because I do not know a single one of you and, therefore, I am not pointing a finger at a single one of you. As the saying goes, I don't know you from Adam. In fact, I know much more about our father, Adam, and our mother Eve, than I know about you.

I rarely purchase the L. A. Times because it is so very pro-abortion, but I bought the May l3th issue to see what they might have to say about the Pope's visit to Holland. About l,000 people rioted and rushed the police who were guarding the building where the Pope was speaking, and all shouted, "Kill the Pope! Kill the Pope!" Doesn't it remind you of the mob at our Lord's trial when they shouted, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" And Pilate said, "Why, what evil has he done?" Their answer was again: "Crucify him! Crucify him!"

At one meeting, a lay woman dressed down the Pope. She said to him: "Are we preaching the liberating Gospel in a credible way if we fail to make room for unmarried people living together, divorced people, homosexuals, married priests and women?" A noted Dutch physician dressed him down, too, saying that the Church should "not take away the right to choose" abortion and mercy killing. The majority of the Dutch are very much in favor of contraception, and they hate to be told that it is wrong.

In the U. S. there are those who claim that as many Catholics practice contraception as the rest of the population, and that as many Catholic women get abortions as the rest of the population.

If 80% of American Catholics believe and practice contraception, it means that they are no longer Catholics. As John Henry Cardinal Newman pointed out in the last century, to deny any important truth of the Catholic Faith is to deny them all. One cannot call oneself a Catholic and then pick and choose. One can't say, "I accept this teaching but to heck with that one."

Fornication, adultery, solitary sin, sodomy, lesbianism, promiscuous petting between unmarried persons, lustful thoughts, voluntarily indulged, are all serious sins against the 6^th Commandment. Every 20 seconds an abortion is performed somewhere in the United States, over 4,000 a day, over l and l/2 million a year. As Pope Paul VI said in a speech to the United Nations in New York in l976, "These children will never sit down at the banquet of life."

It is possible that half of the priests in the U.S.A. do not follow the teaching of the Church with regard to contraception. I have read that when it is brought up in confession, there are priests who say, "You follow your conscience." In other words, do what you please. Thus, they dismiss the problem. You know as well as I do that no one is a good judge of his own case. People take the easy way. Conscience can be the last refuge of the scoundrel. Our consciences must be in line with the official teaching of the Church.

Priests who fear to teach the whole truth will gradually destroy the parish and the people's faith. Parents who contracept should not be surprised when their children reject the Church. Instead of using all of the gadgets, the pill, etc. there is a moral way; NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING. I have read a lot on this subject and I find that the vast majority of couples who use this moral method of limiting the size of their families (Vatican II says that that is their right} say that their marriages have been enriched by the periods of abstinence which are necessary.

We live in a sex-saturated society and the world is in danger of being swamped by false sexuality. Living in this kind of atmosphere, there must be moral casualties. A Catholic gets rid of his sins by a sincere confession. But the number of confessions has dropped to a trickle. Still, people go to Communion week after week, month after month, even year after year. To receive Holy Communion in a state of mortal sin is a sacrilegious Communion. No spiritual benefit accrues. The people who do so only compound their guilt. If you have a reasonable doubt about the state of you soul, go to confession and experience God's mercy and peace.

Have a great love for and appreciation for the virtue of chastity, the holy virtue. It will pay rich spiritual dividends. As Alfred Lord Tennyson, the great English poet in the last century wrote in "Idylls of the King" (he put the words into the mouth of Sir Galahad, the noble prince), "My strength is the strength of ten because my heart is pure."