From Norman W. Lower re contraception.

I'm getting caught up in my previous issues of Catholic Insight. In a letter to the editor, December 2003 issue, Patrick J. Sheahan from Hamilton, Ontario, says sarcastically: "Msgr. Foy forgot to mention that the Winnipeg Statement also was the cause of the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the recession of 1990, and AIDS in Africa, etc." I assume that this remark is in reference to Msgr. Foy's excellent essay in the October 2003 issue, "Fifty reasons why the Winnipeg Statement should be recalled."

It appears to me that Mr. Sheahan does not fully comprehend that Msgr. Foy is clearly identifying what the late Bishop Glennon Flavin (Lincoln, Nebraska) called "the greatest evil in the Catholic Church today--contraception." If Mr. Sheahan has difficulty accepting what Msgr. Foy says, then let him heed the words of Christopher Zakrzewski, former editor of Nazareth Family Journal, who describes in an excellent article the negative consequences to his marriage of the practice of contraception:

"But as we look back on those seventeen years between the birth of our second daughter and the birth of our first son after the restoration of my fertility [from sterilization] we can see that instead of bringing us release from fear, anxiety, and financial worry, that decision [to be sterilized] reaped a grim harvest of self-doubt, spiritual confusion, guilt, discord, and family dysfunctionality. In my wife's case, it brought on a profound sense of loss of her womanhood....

"Contraception is a blight on the entire Body of Christ. It is too large a problem to be dropped in the lap of our young married couples. All sectors of the Church must be marshalled in its eradication. It is arguably, in our culture at the least, the greatest single cause of our failure to pass on the authentic Catholic faith to our children. Recent sociological surveys have shown parents that far and away the main cause of children falling away from the faith of their parents is dysfunctionality in the parents' relationship, and discord is one of the most predictable bitter fruits of the contraceptive lifestyle. ["Our Journey with Humanae Vitae Revisited," Catholic Life and Family (Priests for Life Canada), Vol. 2003, Issue 2.]

Msgr. Foy is correct that the eradication of the evil of contraception in the Catholic Church in Canada cannot be realized until the Canadian bishops revoke their 1968 dissenting Winnipeg Statement.

Your editorial comment at the end of Mr. Sheahan's letter is an excellent reply to what he said.

Quebec, P.Q.