I can’t believe it’s been over a month since my last update! I’ve been having a lot of fun this summer with my friends and family, I know it’s a cliché but time really does fly!

Catching up on my RSS feeds I came across a quotation from Julie’s quote [sic] journal:

If you care about what people think of you, then you should have not become a Catholic.
  ~ St. John Vianney

It’s so true. Being a Catholic is not easy, after all many Catholic values are contrary to those held by modern society. Rather than post a lengthy commentary on why this is so, I’d like to share two things from my summer that highlight the dilemmas an average Catholic might face.

Easy credit

I’m not going to pretend that I’ve read it, but I’ve heard that Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth) attempts to apply Catholic moral truths to the global economy. From what I can gather, Benedict asserts that the current economic system promotes egoism and profit at the neglect of the intrinsic good of the human. Unscrupulous individuals can collect massive amounts of wealth by exploiting those poorer than them, creating a gap between rich and poor.

This message became a reality for me earlier this summer. Whilst I’m normally sensible with money, this summer I gave into temptation and used my credit card to pay for a holiday. I’ve had a lot going on this year and I figured that I earned the break. Now, however, I’m stuck with a hefty debt that I can’t really afford to repay.

I’m not blaming anyone but myself for getting into debt, but I am left questioning why the bank gave me a credit card when they knew that I had just lost my job. I do feel a little exploited, they’re making money out of my inability to repay them.

Thankfully, the debt I’m in is nothing compared to that which other people are facing. Because I’m a student I don’t have as many outgoing expenses as, say, a mother of two and I can easily make cutbacks. My social life is effectively over until the end of the year, I’m limiting my mobile phone usage and I’m going to take the first job I can find. I’m focusing all of my efforts into getting the debt gone and then I’m going to call up the bank and cancel the card.

Condoms

I’m young. Like most young people, I’m attracted to members of the opposite sex – it’s completely natural. Catholic moral teaching accepts this and directs it towards love through chastity:

Love is a gift of God, nourished by and expressed in the encounter of man and woman. Love is thus a positive force directed towards their growth in maturity as persons. In the plan of life which represents each person's vocation, love is also a precious source for the self-giving which all men and women are called to make for their own self-realization and happiness. In fact, man is called to love as an incarnate spirit, that is soul and body in the unity of the person. Human love hence embraces the body, and the body also expresses spiritual love. Therefore, sexuality is not something purely biological, rather it concerns the intimate nucleus of the person. The use of sexuality as physical giving has its own truth and reaches its full meaning when it expresses the personal giving of man and woman even unto death. As with the whole of the person's life, love is exposed to the frailty brought about by original sin, a frailty experienced today in many socio-cultural contexts marked by strong negative influences, at times deviant and traumatic. Nevertheless, the Lord's Redemption has made the positive practice of chastity into something that is really possible and a motive for joy, both for those who have the vocation to marriage (before, in the time of preparation, and afterwards, in the course of married life) as well as for those who have the gift of a special calling to the consecrated life.

But modern society holds a rather negative view of chastity, it is seen as weird or repressive. Whilst I don’t wish to discuss on my own fidelity to this teaching on the Internet (for obvious reasons), I wish to show how difficult it can be to follow Catholic sexual ethics as a young person in the UK. The following is an excerpt from a magazine that my kid brother received. He’s going to university and this was one of the tips that UCAS (the Universities & Colleges Admissions Service) compiled…

All future undergraduates receive such literature, regardless of their faith. Personally I don’t have a problem with it, and I doubt my kid brother does either, we have our own minds. But, it highlights well how we Catholics are increasingly at odds with an increasingly secular society.

Labels: benedictxvi, consumerism, contraceptives, ethics